Routegadget reproduction

[Strider]

You really are not getting this are you? My gripe is with control 10 which I found ambiguous and which I am far from being alone in doing so. Your assertion that I am simply being unreasonable to feel that way is making me want to dig my heels in all the more. I have not and am not about to ask for the leg to be voided. That does not mean I am happy about it.

Oh, I get it perfectly.... We are at odds on the clarity of the CD for control 10, which you feel was ambiguous and I do not. In this we will have to agree to disagree, as I for one do not want to continue this debate any longer.

Out of interest - were you actually an official at this event - I'm just interested to know by what authority you state your case as you speak about both the planner and controller in 3rd person.

I guess it depends on your interpretation of 'official'. Whilst not the offical planner, controller or organiser, I was heavily involved as a committee member in the lead up to the event, in the development of the courses, in the updating of the map, and in the organisation of the event on the day. Plus, I sorted out routegadget and updated the club website post event.

Whether any of that bears any relation to my 'authority to state the case' about a control description being accurate or not, I think probably not, as I'm basing my arguments on fundamental interpretation of IOF & BOF regs here and not on my involvement with the event itself.

S.

[King Penguin]

f.w.i.w. I have switched from OCAD to Condes for course planning
(a) because for one event I had horrendous problems with a map exchange in OCAD, garbling both halves on top of one another
(b) and more relevant here because I find the production of control descriptions easier from Condes, and in particular it will auto-generate text descriptions from pictorial, thus reducing the risk of replacing "east" with "west".

[Strider]

f.w.i.w. I have switched from OCAD to Condes for course planning
(a) because for one event I had horrendous problems with a map exchange in OCAD, garbling both halves on top of one another
(b) and more relevant here because I find the production of control descriptions easier from Condes, and in particular it will auto-generate text descriptions from pictorial, thus reducing the risk of replacing "east" with "west".

I think for future events, and as has been alluded to here, we would be better off going with pictorial descriptions throughout and avoiding falling into this trap.

S.

[awk]

We are at odds on the clarity of the CD for control 10, which you feel was ambiguous and I do not. In this we will have to agree to disagree, as I for one do not want to continue this debate any longer.

I appreciate you may not want to carry the debate on Strider, and equally appreciate it's in danger of getting a wee bit fractious, but can I beg to differ on the question of ambiguity. This is not a criticism of the individual who compiled the descriptions - the written description may be technically correct, but it is horribly difficult to work out.

To me it reads as inside the South East corner. But, as far as I can see, there is no SE corner. It looks far more like the S-most corner of the two corners forming that shimmy in the wall. Indeed, if anything the inside of this corner lies SW from the inside of the northern corner. Make of that what you will, but I simply can't see a SE corner. The corner is certainly orientated to the SE (so that might be inside SE facing corner, which is why I say the description might be technically correct), but it's certainly not what the written description reads intuitively.

I must admit, I would be completely stumped with that written description, and am extremely glad that, having the same control on our course, we had pictorials, where the description is simplicity itself to understand.

Which really takes me on to the more general point I want to draw from this. I am completely stumped as to why we use written descriptions for junior courses, and have been for years. If any group might have a problem understanding them, it's surely younger children (although this thread might indicate that adults do too!!). Pictorial descriptions are, particularly in races like this, far more intuitive and easy to read (especially on the run), and they are easy to teach. I've never found a junior having much trouble understanding pictorials, and indeed I used to translate written descriptions into pictorials for offspring when he was issued with them. I used to teach pictorials to my school children (9-10 years old), and they never had a problem.

[AndyC]

Am I alone in the thought that transposing East & West on Control Descriptions is another form of the "180 degree error" we experience regularly as competitors?

[Paul Frost]

In reply to the issues about things looking different in RouteGadget.

The control circles and connecting lines are generated by RG using co-ordinates that are generated by RG from the XML course file (Ocad or Condes). All the controls are plotted relative to each other (but not to scale).
A blank copy of the map is placed as a background image.
By an iterative process you reposition 2 controls that provide a good x,y mix (ie. top left and bottom right) and by default when those 2 are correctly positioned the rest will be. This process does not take long once you have done it a few times and can/should be very accurate.

The size of the circles is set by RG, but if the size of the underlying map is larger or smaller the circles will appear to be larger or smaller in relation to the map image.

There is no definitive answer as to what size the map should be as it varies depending on the clarity/level of detail on the map. But it should rarely exceed 500-700KB (or 1200px on the longest side), which is about the right compromise on quality and usability. If the image is too large (a common error) you need to zoom out a lot to get a view of more than a few controls and the image quality is then very poor.

[pete.owens]

A couple of things we have found to help when uploading events to routegadget.
1. Use GIF rather than JPEG - it gives sharper images for the same file size for block colour.
2. If the planner adds a couple of dummy controls at sharply defined features such as index crosses at opposite corners on the map then these can be used to align the overprint.

[Roger]

... the written description may be technically correct, but it is horribly difficult to work out. To me it reads as inside the South East corner. But, as far as I can see, there is no SE corner.

The textual translations of the symbols make perfect sense if you think about a square enclosure. However, although that's what you may get in a forest, it's less common in a city. For buildings I find the text hopeless: despite the OCAD translation being "south-east corner (inside)", I tend to verbalise this particular description as "in the corner, north-west [of the vertex]" which works for both buildings and sheep-pens.

I'd have been struggling with the text version at Lincoln. Even ignoring the 'corner' problem, pictorial descriptions tend to be more precise (as well as more easily legible when running fast); I've suffered text versions a few times in the last couple of years and have never liked the experience.

One more 'corner' question: was control 68 (in the maze, as below) immediately accessible from the gap in the second hedge, or not? I doubt that anybody lost significant time here because you could see over the hedges, but it does further illustrate the complexities of the 'corner' symbol.

I am completely stumped as to why we use written descriptions for junior courses, and have been for years. ... Pictorial descriptions are, particularly in races like this, far more intuitive and easy to read (especially on the run), and they are easy to teach.

Completely agree, although for beginners (as opposed to children) it's another code that needs to be broken so does make the sport a bit less accessible.

The first time I ran on pictorials, with no tuition beforehand, was at a Southern Champs on Leith Hill. Because the 'cod'e is pretty intuitive almost all were obvious but 'thicket' wasn't and I lost a little time. (Aside: I looked down the results strings: M21A, M21B (with my 92 minutes for 8.4km), M21C, couldn't see M21D, then M21E with some really long times. They must be really rubbish, I thought .)

[Mrs H]

Yes I guess the nub of the matter is whether the south east aspect of the corner relates to the orientation of the corner or its placement in relation to other corners. You can show this on pictorials and you could argue that the description would then read south eastern-most corner BUT....

.... to compound my confusion there is another south east facing corner well inside the circle which is actually south east of the corner where the control was sited - on the uncrossable wall to the south of the open area which I attempted to get access to.

The controller told me in all honesty that he had not checked the written control descriptions - I would be interested to know what he felt about this one.

[Strider]

.... to compound my confusion there is another south east facing corner well inside the circle which is actually south east of the corner where the control was sited - on the uncrossable wall to the south of the open area which I attempted to get access to.

Do you mean the uncrossable crag rather than the uncrossable wall to the south of the open area?

S.

[seabird]

f.w.i.w. I have switched from OCAD to Condes for course planning
(a) because for one event I had horrendous problems with a map exchange in OCAD, garbling both halves on top of one another
(b) and more relevant here because I find the production of control descriptions easier from Condes, and in particular it will auto-generate text descriptions from pictorial, thus reducing the risk of replacing "east" with "west".

Both these tasks are also easily achieved in Ocad 9 (and presumably 10).

But I agree with SOA why bother with text descriptions at all. Experience shows that Juniors cope very easily with Pictorial descriptions.

[Mrs H]

Do you mean the uncrossable crag rather than the uncrossable wall to the south of the open area?

S.

I don't know what it was - I didn't go there - it was a solid thick black line I didn't bother looking at detail that was in OOB particularly as I was in a race frantically trying to make up the time I'd lost on the previous pants control

[Strider]

I don't know what it was - I didn't go there - it was a solid thick black line I didn't bother looking at detail that was in OOB particularly as I was in a race frantically trying to make up the time I'd lost on the previous pants control

If you look at the map extract you put on page 1 of the thread, there are three linear features inside the circle. The northern wall, the southern wall and then the impassable crag, which I think is the line you're alluding to.

S.

[graeme]

As for No 10 on D course my wife reasoned that as it was a Junior course with straight forward navigation it would be on the path

Which indeed it was. So why then wasn't the control description the completely unambiguous "path"? I'm sure even MrsH could have figured that out .

[Strider]

As for No 10 on D course my wife reasoned that as it was a Junior course with straight forward navigation it would be on the path

Which indeed it was. So why then wasn't the control description the completely unambiguous "path"?

Probably one of the factors at play here in the siting of it and the resultant control description was that the control was also used on the other courses, not just the D course.

S.