Digital Battlefield Reports

timj@uk.gdscorp.com writes:

@:) Basically its impossible to get everyone to agree on a standard FT
@:) report and the requirements for humans and computers are
@:) orthogonal.

  I'm not sure I agree with either of these statements.  I haven't
really tried to get anyone to agree to a standard FT report, but I
don't think anybody really complained about Mark's in his PbEM game.
As far as computer vs human requirements, Mark's reports, plus some
delimiters (begin ship USS Shoshone, eg) to make it easier for the
machine to recognize where ships started or where systems ended and
hangar bay contents began, would have been enough.  Actually until I
screwed it up the program I was working on was taking the existing
input without any real complaints.  Oh, the only other thing I think a
computer program would require would be a stable report structure.
Some surprising things happened along the way, like approximate
positions (denoted by ~), that screwed up my input routines.  But none
of that was hard to fix, so as long as one knew it was coming, one
could pretty easily be prepared in advance to handle it.

-joachim