Re: [Toad-devel] File format for tournament information

[Ben Finney]

On 02-Apr-2003, Garner, Robin wrote:
> I have defined a file format for exchanging tournament data - it is
> being implemented for my system that does the Australian Tournament
> Rankings, to replace the ad-hoc formats I read at the moment.

Great!  That's functionality I hadn't thought of, but would fit nicely
in my vision for TOAD.

> The attached file TournRec.lhs is a Haskell parser for the tournament
> file (proof of existence for a parser :), and the file format is
> specified in comments at the start of the program.  It's early enough
> days that the format can be modified without much trouble.

Now I'll have to brush up on (i.e. learn for the first time) my Haskell
skills.

> Some examples of the format this file reads are as follows:

Any objections to defining an XML format, so that the DTD holds the
format description?

Other than that, a few comments:

  - Pick, and stick to, a delimiter for the fields; you're using space
    sometimes, comma sometimes.  If you want a human-readable file, it
    should be well-defined what is syntax and what is data.  (This would
    be fixed by using an XML format with every piece of data a
    well-defined "element".)

  - Use ISO date format; it's smaller, unambiguous, logical, and
    standard.  (It also matches the date field order that the majority
    of the Go-playing population of the world uses :-)

I think a simple format like this is exactly what we should be aiming
for with the first round of TOAD data storage.

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