fsTimer documentation

Section 1 Installing fsTimer
Section 2 Overview
Section 3 Checklist for timing with fsTimer
Section 4 Detailed descriptions of fsTimer components
4.1 Setting up for a new race
4.2 Importing preregistration - details
4.3 Registration - details
4.4 Compiling registrations - details
4.5 Race timing - details
Section 5 Additional details for developers

Section 4.1 - Setting up for a new race


Section 2.6 gave a brief overview of creating a new project, and now we will dive into the details.

The first step to creating a new project is to choose a project name. The name must use only letters, numbers, and underscore. It must also not be the name of an already existing project (or, more precisely, an already existing file or directory in the fstimer directory). If a project of that same name already exists, fsTimer will throw an error and will not let you advance until you choose a name that isn't already in use:



If you want to use a name that is already taken by an existing file or folder, you will have to rename or delete that file or folder.

The next window allows you to specify the fields that will show up in the registration database.



The "Up" and "Down" buttons allow you to change the order of the fields. This is the order in which they will appear in the registration database: The top entry in this window will be the furthest left column in the registration window, and the bottom entry in this window will be the furthest right column in the registration window. If you have many fields and some of them you want to be able to see without having to sideways scroll in the registration window, you should put them towards the top of this lsit.

The "Remove" button removes a field. Last name, First name, ID, Age, and Gender, however, are hard-coded fields due to their importance for creating divisional results. These fields cannot be removed. The "New.." buttons allow you to create a new entrybox or combobox. A combobox means in the registration database the entry will have to take one of a set collection of values. In the window for creating a new registration entry below, "Gender" is a combobox with options "male" and "female" (and blank). An entrybox is a box for freely entering text, like "Last name" and "First name" in the registration entry below.



When creating a new entrybox, you will specify the name of the field (e.g., Last name) and the maximum number of characters to allow in the entrybox. The appropriate maximum number of characters will depend on the field (ID will probably require fewer than Address).



When creating a new combobox, you will specify the name of the field (e.g., Gender) as well as what the options in the combobox should be, separated by commas. For example, "male,female" would indicate that the options should be male and female. A blank option will automatically be added to any combobox, you don't need to worry about adding it yourself.



fsTimer will not allow you to create two fields with the same name.



When you have finished specifying the registration fields, you move on to controlling the behavior of the "Add family" button, as described in Section 2.6. You should select all of the fields that are not the same for all members of a family, probably First name, ID, Age, and Gender.



Finally you must specify the divisionals. Again, "Up" and "Down" change the order in which the divisions will appear in the divisional results.



"New" allows you to add a division. You specify the gender for the division (or both), and the age range. Note that the age ranges are inclusive on both ends! So putting 10-14 will include both 10 year olds and 14 year olds in the division. Put 0 as the minimum age to have no bottom limit (e.g., "10 and under" is the range 0-10). Put 120 as the maximum age to have no upper limit (e.g., 85-120 will give "85 and up").



Note that it is OK to have overlapping divisions, if you want. "Edit" and "Remove" work exactly as you would expect. Once the divisions are specified, a new subdirectory in the fstimer directory with the specified project name will be created (that is, if the project name was project_name, then the directory fstimer/project_name is created). Inside of this directory will be a file project_name.reg. This file stores all of the information that you just specified (registration fields, which fields to blank when adding a family member, and divisional divisions) in json format. If you want to use the same project settings across multiple computers (as you will when you want to do registration on multiple computers), then just copy the entire project_name directory into the fstimer directory on all computers.

Continue on to Section 4.2 Importing preregistration - details.