Sailwave sparkline generator

The Sailwave sparkline generator is a custom Windows program that creates Sparkline graphs from Sailwave data files.   Sparkline graphs are a good way to show the regatta cumulative standings after each race.    The graph can be shown based on ranking or points. Many combinations of Sailwave files have been tested, including qualifying and final series.   The qualifying / final series has an option to graph the Gold series above the Silver series and so on.

Limitations:

The program needs to be installed on a Windows computer and communicates with the Sailwave program which must be version 2.28.11 or higher.   

Acknowledgement:

A big thank you to Jon Eskdale and Huw Pearce for their technical advice and encouragement.

Documentation:

The below documentation is a simple explanation of the program.  The red numbers will be used as references.

(1)  This is used to load the Sailwave file data, and it is recommended that all Sailwave files are closed before using this option.   It will open Sailwave, communicate with it to process all the races and close Sailwave afterwards.  If you have any errors you should close the Sailwave file without saving or you could lose data.  The text on the yellow background on the bottom (28) displays the process status.  There will be a prompt for a qualifying series file if a qualifying/final series is detected.  The qualifying file must have the same number of sailors and contain just the qualifying races.

(2)  This option creates the graph based on the options selected.   This option is not available if no Sailwave file was selected.  Multiple fleets can be selected, and a right click selects the previously selected fleet(s).

(3)  This option generates a spreadsheet based on the Sailwave data containing multiple worksheets.  The spreadsheet will be saved in the temp directory of the computer and there will be a prompt to open it.

(4)   Any text entered in this data field will be displayed as the title of the graph.  The actual date and time will be substituted for the %date% or %time% text strings.   Any text minus the first 3 characters found in the first column of the “raw event_info“ worksheet contained in the spreadsheet of (3) and surrounded by “%%” will be replaced with the value of the second column.  i.e. %version% will be displayed as the current Sailwave version.  %event% is the default for this option.

(5)  The graph can be based on rank or points.  When selecting Rank in the case of qualifying and final series the Gold rank results will be displayed above the Silver rank results.

(6)   Item 6 just applies to the first and last selection of item (8)   The cycled mode goes through all the line styles and repeats the same sequence. 

(7)   Item 7 just applies to the first three selections of item (9)   The cycled mode goes through all the colours and repeats the same sequence. 

(8)  Selects the line style group.

(9)  Selects the colour group.

(10) Line labels are optional and are placed at the right end of the sparklines.  The line label content is defined in item (27)

(11) This item defines what happens when you select (click) one of the sparklines.   “Line label display” displays the current defined line label defined in item (27) as an annotation.  Dataframe display” displays the whole default data frame or the Dataframe defined in item (16) as an annotation.  “Attach custom highlight” attaches and displays the default custom highlight or the custom highlight as defined in items (19-22)  Remove custom highlight” removes the custom highlight from the selected sparkline.

With the standard cursor you have, left click once on a sparkline to display an annotation and right click once to remove an annotation.  After the annotation is displayed, it can be moved by clicking on it and dragging it.  After zooming the standard cursor changes to a + sign.  With the + sign displayed the single click is replaced with a double click.  You can get back to the standard cursor by unselecting the zoom or pan button.

(12) This enables the option to display the number of boats racing (not DNS or DNC) as a bar chart below the sparkline graph.

(13) Defines the colour for the bar chart of (12)

(14) Winner highlights lines are wider and placed below the sparklines.

(15) These items define the modes for item (11).   Multiple and Hover do not apply when using “Attach custom highlight” or “Remove custom highlight” in item (11).  The single mode is the only method for those selection modes.

(16) By default, the “Dataframe display” lists all the available fields.  This option allows you to define the fields to display and in which order.

(17) Use this option to remove all custom highlights.

(18) This option controls the display of the custom highlights.  The highlights are not deleted when selecting “No”.

(19-22) These items are used to define the custom highlight template.   The transparency is in a range 0-1 and can be set in item (22) with the Alpha slider.

(23) Custom highlights can be attached in batch mode by defining the display features in a spreadsheet.  The spreadsheet must have an extension of xlsx, the feature definition must be in a worksheet called “custom_highlight “, and the first six columns (A-F) must have the following headings:   ID     CH_Colour   CH_Transparency CH_Width     CH_Style      CH_Top_Under .    Item (3) “Spreadsheet” generates a spreadsheet with a worksheet called “custom_highlight” which has the correct layout.  Item (26) copies the current custom highlight template to the clipboard.  This template is tab delimited and should fill the correct fields if pasted in a cell of column B.

(24) This option allows you to assign the custom highlight template to records based on the contents of a single field.  The first selection displays all the available fields, and the second selection displays all the values of that field.

(25) This shows the current custom highlight template graphicly.

(26) This copies the current custom highlight template to the clipboard.

(27) This option allows you to display data regarding the sailor and other text at the right side of the sparkline.  Any field minus the first 4 characters listed in the “Sailor_info” worksheet column header and surrounded by “%%” can be displayed here.   All other text will just be listed.  ie.  %sailno% fleet : %fleet%  would look like this:  123456 fleet: Radial

 

On the bottom left of the graph there are options to zoom, pan and save the graph as an image file.