Fwd: Version 1.3 of Tabbie

[Klaas van Schelven]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Klaas van Schelven <kl...@vanschelven.com>
Date: Oct 8, 2007 10:19 PM
Subject: Version 1.3 of Tabbie
To: Colm Flynn <colm_...@hotmail.com>
Cc: tabbie...@googlegroups.com

Hey Colm,

Some more Tabbie News - would be great if you put it online:


-----
We've just released Tabbie version 1.3. This is pretty much the version as it's going to be used at the Worlds in Bangkok and also coming weekend at the Haifa Nightly Tournament (we trust that Tabbie is now stable enough to be operated by drunks)

New in this version:

* Adjudicator Allocation has been completely redone. It takes into account the following:
    * University - Adjudicator conflicts ('scratches'),
    * Team - Adjudicator conflicts ('scratches'),


    * Better adjudicators should be chairs
    * Better debates get better panels
    * Adjudicators should avoid previous co-panellists
    * Adjudicators should avoid previous adjudicated teams

* Overview page made more clear - only currently possible options are shown



* Layout:
    * Removed big "Tabbie" header to clear up some space
    * Personalized Adjudicator Sheets in smaller font for longer names
    * Removed confusing "settings" option



* Technical:
    * Removed the website from the codebase to separate host
    * GPL Licence header added to all code files

General Tabbie Information: http://tabbie.wikidot.com/
Online demos: http://www.smoothtournament.com/
Downloading: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=199347

What is Tabbie?
Tabbie is Tab Software for British Parliamentary Debating Tournaments. It calculates the fairest possible draw for you, based on the official WUDC rules. It has an easy to use Web Interface, allowing input from multiple computers. Tabbie is very stable - it's been around since the NTU Worlds 2004 and is the software of choice for Bangkok Worlds 2008. Tabbie is Free (Open Source) Software.

Klaas

[Meir Maor]

I am considering refactoring the tabbie DB, to remove the need of creating
tables on the fly.
I propse to merge the tables for each round and possibly also the temp
tables for draw,
I suggest adding an additional rounds table which will contain the
status of each round,
this table may also be used later on to define in advance the number
of rounds and how each round should be paired:
random/pre-seedin/power/bubble fold.
This change would be acompabied by two scripts to transform a databse
too and from
the new layout.
does this seem reasonable, would you go along with this change?

Meir.

[Klaas van Schelven]

Hi Meir, others,

Good to hear from you. I was considering the same, but if we want to break compatability I would suggest a much more radical approach.

My approach would have easy adaption to other systems of debating (2 2 person teams, 2 3 person teams, etc.) as well. To this end, I would like to get rid of terms like "first", "second" etc. in the tables, and replace them with the amount of points scored. Same for "og", "oo" "cg" etc.
Maybe more... if we're doing this I want to have a data layer that will carry Tabbie another 5 years easily. Ideas?

Also, I think it's going to be a lot of work.... would you still consider it if we're going "all the way"? Anyone who would like to jump in at this point?

I'll try to come up with a proposal in the coming days, feel free to come up with your own if you have smart ideas....

regards
Klaas

[Deepak Jois]

On 10/9/07, Klaas van Schelven <klaasvan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, I think it's going to be a lot of work.... would you still consider it
> if we're going "all the way"? Anyone who would like to jump in at this
> point?
>
> I'll try to come up with a proposal in the coming days, feel free to come up
> with your own if you have smart ideas....
>

Klaas knows about this, but this is just to open up the discussion to
everybody else interested. I have done a bit of work on a completely
new implementation of the Tab software using a framework called Ruby
on Rails http://rubyonrails.org . I will open source it, I just
haven't got around to it just yet. Ruby on Rails is a web framework
built on top of the Ruby programming language and has gained a lot of
traction nowadays.

I completely understand the concerns people might have about moving
away from a well tested and already working software to a completely
new framework. But I think we can make it happen quite smoothly if
there is a critical mass of people onboard in terms of their
willingness to use Ruby on Rails as a framework of choice.

I have a clean schema already nailed out. I have ported the SilverLine
algorithm to Ruby as part of my work on the simulation. So the real
work involved is just the input modules.

Let me see if I can get it out by the weekend. I had created a Google
Code project a long time ago. But we can work something out to merge
it with the existing Tabbie codebase.

Deepak

[Meir Maor]

We could go all out, but I do not see suppoting non-BP turnaments as a top
priority:
Alon altman and myself wrote gentab: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gentab/
which has a more flexable database schema. We could use something similar.

The main reason I stopped working on gentab and tryed working on Tabbie is that
Tabbie seems to be more popular amongst turnament orgenizers.

If we are considering a major rewrite, we should consider which code
base, is most
suitable.

I think gentab has a solid code base(perl and postgresql, draw written
in java), however I do not believe we have a big enough comunity of
debate software developers to make competing projects a good aproach.
So I suggest we discuss this on the mailing list,
I see if we can gather behind a coherent aproach, as I see we have at
least 3 projects using 3 diffrent technologies.

Meir.

[Klaas van Schelven]

On 10/10/07, Meir Maor <meir...@gmail.com> wrote:

We could go all out, but I do not see suppoting non-BP turnaments as a top
priority:

I do, especially if we're considering a rewrite that would break compatability (and therefor  the possibility to have one-click fallback of older versions).
Also, this would really mean uniting Tab efforts world-wide: there's a huge American market (even commercial) and Australia has been dominating the debating world, though they have a different system of debating.

Alon altman and myself wrote gentab: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gentab/
which has a more flexable database schema. We could use something similar.

I'll take a look.

The main reason I stopped working on gentab and tryed working on Tabbie is that
Tabbie seems to be more popular amongst turnament orgenizers.

If we are considering a major rewrite, we should consider which code
base, is most
suitable.

Agreed.

I think gentab has a solid code base(perl and postgresql, draw written
in java), however I do not believe we have a big enough comunity of
debate software developers to make competing projects a good aproach.

Agreed.

So I suggest we discuss this on the mailing list,
I see if we can gather behind a coherent aproach, as I see we have at
least 3 projects using 3 diffrent technologies.

Well.... there's many more. I know Aaron Craigie is considering (or building?) a new version of the famous Craigie Tab. There's a number of American gratis (not open) solutions out there and Tournaman (German, gratis, not open). It would be great if we could create an ever more inclusive software package.

So now we have two questions: the DB schema, and a programming language on top of that.

As to the language, I'm not attached to any language in particular. (not a big fan of PHP myself) However,
My reason to use PHP would be:
Huge userbase means:
  easy deployment (there are many complete LAMP packages, even for Windows)
  many possible developers

RoR advantages:
  fun language - I personally want to learn something new
  supposedly very easy to work with.

Perl scares me personally, same for Java (though I have a lot of experience in Java). And whatever we do, please let's make sure our stack of tools is as small as possible. I'm personally a Python fan, but not for the web. Thoughts anyone?

Also - if we're doing a big new project - who's in? Meir - do you think you can get Alon on board?

regards,
Klaas

[Klaas van Schelven]

Alon altman and myself wrote gentab: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gentab/
which has a more flexable database schema. We could use something similar.

I'll take a look.

Ok, maybe that was a bit optimistic... this will take a while. Maybe you could give us a short overview of the database schema and it's strong points instead? I would like to ask Deepak the same question on Tabbie-RoR.

regards,
Klaas