Trick-taking card game question

[John McSorley]

Often when I read literature on trick-taking card games, I get hung up
on the inferred order of play
when a hand is displayed. For example, the usual double-dummy diagram
showing all 52 cards
in bridge, or similar notation for Skat, show the "initial condition",
as it were. Most often, the authors
then use prose to describe the play from there. But it is at that
point where my feeble mind sometimes
loses track. Yes, I know, dealing out the actual hands would solve
this, but I'm not always in a position
to do that when I'm reading. So my question is, are there any standard
formats to display this information on a page,
and/or computer file formats to do same? When I come across a hand
that I think needs this info, I would
type it up and tape it in the margin of the book, for example. There
probably exists something like this for Bridge,
but I would also want something more general...different number of
players, card points, etc. Then I can refer
back to the solution when I review the book.

If not, I suppose I could write a small program that takes a hand,
game descrition, etc, and places that in a header.
The body of the file would be the play of the hand. The file extension
would be something like ".trk". The program
would display/print the info that I need as an output.

Thoughts?