[complib-talk] Composition Library Project Update - July 2011

[Graham J. <gr...@ch...>]

Although development of the Composition Library software has continued at a
slow pace over the last two years, it is still progressing.

All of the functions have been prototyped and refined and the concept has
been fully proven. In fact, I already find it very useful. It now has the CC
decisions on methods encoded which means that it can properly classify and
entitle new methods, and derive all its properties including symmetry,
method above and below, right place and hunt and working bell cycles.

It now imports the CC collections (all methods and provisional methods) from
the XML collections, and validates these in the process. A number of
discrepancies in the CC collections have been identified in the process, and
have been corrected in the CC collections. It also now displays the blue
lines and/or grids for methods, by default drawing a line through hunt bells
and each unique working bell (i.e. one of each cycle for differentials).

Collections have been implemented, allowing compositions to be easily added
to collections as references. This feature provides the means to create new
collections for public or personal use, and to record composition references
against existing publications, such as the Ringing World, or published
books.

Some statistics reports have been added, providing analysis of methods by
leadhead code, class and stage, and numbers of compositions recorded by
composer and stage.

Library update and user registration functionality has been included,
providing the means to keep your local database up to date with methods,
compositions and collections, and to upload any additions or updates to the
master Composition Library.

For more details see the version 0.2 alpha:
<http://www.changeringing.co.uk/complib/screenshots.php>

Now work turns to taking the core composition functionality to the next
level. At present, it only deals with compositions in single methods, and
positional calling. A major enhancement will see a complete rework to
introduce a composition editor with the flexibility to cope with (hopefully)
any composition, be it Grandsire, Stedman, Spliced, unusual starts, or
bizarre differentials. Following this enhancement and some testing, the
intention is to issue a beta version to project members to trial.
 
Graham John, July 2011