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 Installation
& Implementation
Installation
No special installation procedures are required. Yardstik
executes from the command prompt. It is customised by editing
values held in a "yardstik.ini" file. The path of the directory/folder
in which the "yardstik.ini" file is located can be specified
as the second argument of the command string. Alternatively,
if no second argument exists, the data file directory/folder
will be scanned for "yardstik.ini". If "yardstik.ini" is still
not found, Yardstik will execute with default values.
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Implementation
The yardstik.ini file is edited with a standard text editor.
The file format is conventional. Settings are limited to the
length of a line. Lines beginning with "#" are considered to
be comments and ignored.
Assignments take the form:
VariableName = Value
Spaces are ignored. Variable names are case sensitive.
The following system values can be changed:
Ipgl: defined page length for paginated results listing.
Titles are repeated at the top of each page. Ipgl = 0
turns pagination off.
Default: 0
Fdiscount: defines the rate at which the significance
of match results is discounted. A value of 0 (no discounting)
means that a five year old match is as relevant to a player's
ratings as last week's match. Theoretically Fdiscount can take
values: 0.0 < Fdiscount < 1.0. In
practice, Fdiscount should probably not exceed 0.5.
Default: 0.1
Fthreshold: defines the number of discounted matches
a player must play in order to establish a rating. If Fthreshold
is set at 0.0 any match result will establish a rating. For
credibility, Fthreshold should probably be set at at least 2.0.
Higher vales might be used to encourage more match playing.
Default: 2.0
Fdisqualify: ensures that only matches played Fdisqualify
years ago or less are used in the calculation of player ratings.
Earlier matches are rejected and a warning issued. A value of
zero means that no matches will be disqualified on grounds of
age. (Although the value of Fdiscount may reduce their importance.)
Default: 5.0
Ifirstto ("First to"): defines the scoring objective
for the match (summary scoring) or for the game (detail scoring).
If no scoring objective exists — perhaps because the match is
time-constrained, then a value of zero applies. For the purpose
of Yardstik, "Firstto" is the score at which a win is (generally)
declared, whether or not a minimum margin applies.
Default: 3
Examples:
Summary scoring, best of 5 games: Ifirstto = 3
Detail scoring, best of 3 games of first to 21: Ifirstto
= 21
Detail scoring, best of 3 games of first to 15, by a margin
of 2: Ifirstto = 15
Football: Ifirstto = 0
Data file
Undated, summary scores:
Match data is held in space-delimited text files with ".scs"
extentions. At their simplest, they look like this:
The first two fields identify the players, the third field
is the match result. Thus:
FirstPlayerID SecondPlayerID FirstPlayerScore:SecondPlayerScore.
Player identifiers cannot contain embedded blanks, and are
case-sensitive. There is no theoretical limit to their length
(other than the availability of memory and the 100-character
limit to the length of an input line) but excessively long
names will spoil the format of the results file.
New players are created by exception. Mistyping a player's
identifier will trigger the creation of a new player.
Dated, summary scores:
If data is entered as above, the match date will be assumed
to be the run date, and result ageing will be inoperative.
Alternatively an explicit date can be entered. Thus:
Dates can be entered in "dd/mm/yyyy" or "dd/mm/yy" format.
Short-form dates are assumed to be no earlier 1980.
Dated, detailed scores:
Game scores are comma-delimited and must not include imbedded
blanks. Thus:
Each game must be scored: FirstPlayerScore:SecondPlayerScore,
(i.e. as before) but the order in which the games are listed
is not relevant. The last line of the example above could
equally well have been:
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