USEBIO 1.4
USEBIO is an XML file format for reporting bridge results from scoring programs. It was first used by the English Bridge Union but is now also used by Pianola, Bridgewebs and RealBridge among others. A new update to it, currently in draft form, has been released today and can be found at https://usebio.org/usebio-1.4.html
Comments
We could do with a COUNTRY and ECATSSESSIONID field both for Ecats usage. The Country field currently has to be transmitted within the Email Subject header but would be better placed within the Usebio XML.
I may have missed it but what I think would be really useful is a flexible user-defined label element, where you can put in custom elements without having to define them all in the DTD. For example:
I think this will solve a lot of these requirements that only really apply to one or two users. Then it will be a matter purely between the scoring programs and ECats as to how this is defined, and Pianola, Bridgewebs and other users can safely ignore it. Consequently, we should avoid, wherever possible, unnecessary elements that have only one purpose for one very specific organisation.
Other things I'd like to see based on previous XML creation issues:
I'd like the SESSION_COUNT redefined and more precise. It currently is difficult to distinguish between real sessions and sessions for charge purposes. Probably needs a new tag to define number of sessions. Similarly the SECTION_COUNT Is not helpful without a specification of how many section within each session. I would also prefer the SESSION tag to be mandatory - makes a more general decode of files easier. Section 2.2.8 is quite confusing.
I think the TOTAL_SCORE tag could usefully be expanded into separate types of total score (TOTALIMPs,TOTALVPS, TOTALPC, TOTALXIMP) and I;m unclear on the usage of MAX_SCORE as helpful again without further definition.