New website online but still under construction

I work with SmartCom for professional advice about communication, website, logo's, etcetera. Currently the final website is still in a pre-design phase (meaning that SmartCom is waiting for my input), but we decided to launch an under-construction website in the mean time. That website is now online: www.gymnastics-software.com

Check out the cool picture on top showing my logo laying in parts ready to be assembled. I like it!

Upgrading Development Environment and Infrastructure

Developing cutting-edge software is what I want to do. That means staying up-to-date with the latest development tools and technologies. For those who want to know, these are the tools I work with:

Coding: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, C#

User interface: Window Presentation Foundation (.NET 4.0)

Font development: FontLab Studio 5

Laptop: Dell XPS M1710

Server: Dell PowerEdge 510


Last week I upgraded from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010. One thing that is improved in this new version, is the quality of text rendering: good for us, because it means that WAG symbols will be displayed better. On the other hand, some features I used in older versions, are disbanded by Microsoft and no longer work in VS 2010: extra rework for me. And finally the software uses a new framework that will not exist on most computers, and therefore it must be installed with the GS applications: more mega bytes to download and installing the software will take longer.

New Product Names

Currently four products are being developed:

• WAG Fonts
• WAG Symbols Keyboard
• WAG AddIn for Microsoft Office
• WAG Judge

I am fine with the names "Fonts", "Symbols Keyboard", etc... but not with the "WAG" acronym. First of all "WAG" is hard to spell, sounds bad when spoken as a word, and lately the acronym receives much attention in the meaning "Wives and Girlfriends", not exactly something I want the software to be associated with.

So I decided to change the acronym from WAG to GS which stands for Gymnastics Software. So in the next release, the products will be named:

• GS Fonts
• GS Symbols Keyboard
• GS AddIn for Microsoft Office
• GS Judge

Tom

What is the mini-language?

The mini-language is the language you can use in the text editor of the WAG Judge application: between the symbols keyboard and the score slip.

This is the place where you insert the symbols that will be displayed in the score slip. To add special features to the exercise that influence the difficulty score, you can use the mini-language which I will explain here:

To create a connection

Type a space between two elements that are not in the same connection.

  becomes: 

To indicate a fall

Falls alter the DV because a connection value is not awarded in case there was a fall in the connection. To indicate that there was a fall in the element (or its landing), type the letter F immediately after the element that has the fall.

becomes:

To indicate an invalid element

Sometimes a gymnast performs an element, but receives no difficulty value for it. For example when a salto is not landed on the feet. Of course you want to see the symbol of the element, but you don't want it to be taken into account in the evaluation. In that case, type the letter x immediately afer the element.

 becomes:

To indicate an invalid element with a fall

If the element has a fall and it is not valid for DV, type the letters xF immediately after the element.

 becomes:

To devaluate the DV

When for technical reasons the elements DV must be lowered by one, than you must type the minus sign - after the element.

 becomes:

To devaluate an element to a lower element in the code

To devaulate the complete element (for example due to an incomplete pirouette), type the less-than < character after the element.

 becomes:

New elements: update

Nellie Kim asked me to wait a little bit, because some symbols will change. As soon as I receive the new symbol shapes, I will post them here.

New elements from the Rotterdam 2010 World Championships

I just added the new WC 2010 elements to the WAG Symbols fonts. Because I saw a problem with the shape of certain symbols, I first want to check this with Nellie Kim before I release it to you.

In the mean time, I will continue to update the other software applications. As soon as the new symbols are approved by the WTC, I will release them.