quote:

Originally posted by TekCapper:
Nathan,

Here is my big wish list. #28 and #29 are big ones for me to keep the DB size down.

(1) Add a "Hide Scratched Horses" option to the "Race Form View" menu to turn on/off showing the scratched horses in the Race Form.

Nathan: This is already avaible from the Race Form View Menu->Hide Scratched command. I can add a 'hot key' to it.

(2) Add a button on the left side of Speed Graph, below the "Reset PPs to Most Recent" button, to "Reset PPs to Primary Selected" to have the speed graph show the main, blue, pace line selected on the race form. I find myself doing this manually every time, flipping back and forth from the race form to the speed graph, because the selected race I want to graph is not always the last race.

Nathan: OK -- good catch.

(3) Add a "Previous Race" and "Next Race" button on the toolbar.

Nathan: I could... This is hot keyed so that CTRL-B and Ctrl-N and move back and next. Not hard, so I'll probably add them in for usability's sake.

(4) Make the toolbar customizable, having the ability to add or remove any of the menu choices as buttons

Nathan: Would be a nice touch, but a ton of work, esp. given the tech ES's UI is built on.

(5) Have a paceline selection criteria which is customizable, not just for simulation bias settings but for general use,... allowing for use last race with no excuse, find most suitable race, ignore trip trouble in selection, etc.

Nathan: This one seems to come up a lot. Will definitely prioritize it.


(6) Add an updated varmasterlist.html to the help files in the directory \Program Files\ThoroTech\ESROI5\Help and add a choice for it on the "Help" menu

Nathan: Definitely.

(7) Add the ability to print the Fractions Tool view and the Formula View in the "Print" Dialog box so that they can be printed with PPs, instead of having to print each seperately.

Nathan: Yes, it would be nice. It's the grid control that is used in those two views that make it so much extra work to have everything print together. I might look into doing this, but it may be better to put that effort into creating a fully customizeable "Form View" that could bring in things from all aspects of ES.


(8) Add the ability to "hide" columns in the formula view so that they do not print.

Nathan: OK, hopefully can do this one without too much sweat....

(9) Add autocomplete ability to the Formula View expression field so that when you type $ or # and start typing it will start matching to the variable or the function, instead of just bring up a pulldown list, then add the ability to hit return to select the variable or function you started typing.

Nathan: Yeah, my version of 'intellisense" doesn't work too well....

(10) Add a checkbox to export column names as the first row when you choose "CSV Export" in FV. That way you can choose whether or not you want the column names in the CSV export file.

Nathan: good one

(11) Add the ability to show split times in feet per second (this may be asking for too much)

Nathan: Will look into it. As long as the distance for each split is known, shouldn't be a problem....

(12) Somehow identify the corresponding selected pacelines when printing the "Race Form" view, so that you can see what pacelines were selected for each horse on a printout, maybe adding a small blue or yellow box next to selected pacelines.

Nathan: Reasonable request

(13) The ability to print the "View Database Contents" details. Useful if you want to print to a file and email someone a list of the races in your database.

Nathan: OK.

(14) The ability to "clear" the simulation view (maybe from the right click popup menu) so if you run more than one simulation with different settings you can clear that view, then run it again the way you want it. Now the only way to clear the simulation view is to close a card and reopen it.


Nathan: By this you mean teh Simulation Charts produced after each run? OK

(15) The ability to open a date range of race cards from the "Open Cards By Date" selection dialog.

Nathan: Shouldn't be too hard to do. OK

(16) I realize that the Exotic Results files only contain the Final Time of the race,... but the Instant Charts do contain the fractional times. It would be cool if, when you "Store Race Charts", ES would read in and store the F1, F2, and F3 fractional times (in seconds) for each race. These are currently accessible via a right click on the race form and selecting "Race Properties", but the F1, F2, and F3 times have to be manually entered after looking them up in the Instant Chart. It would be very helpful if these values were loaded automatically into the DB (it looks like these are probably stored in the settings.sdb). Then they will be accessible via FV's variables, $rrRaceFract1, $rrRaceFract2, and $rrRaceFract3, just as $rrRaceTime is, without having to manually input the values in the race properties.


Nathan: Yes, they have to be parsed though. Yuck, but I can probably do it (though I'm loathe to do anything with a format that could change, or go away, or just be hidden....)

The fractions are available in the Comprehensive Chart files. And ES6 can now load them. It DOES record the race fractions when this occurs. But, these charts cost $.50 each. The feature was added by $pecial request a couple of years back for someone who is willing to spend the money on the Comp Charts.

I'll take a look at it. If it seems feasible, I'll add FV access to the variables as well.

(17) It would be helpful to have FV available even when you do not have a race card open and be able to create a "Database" template that can pull information from settings.sdb and the currently connected profiler database. This can be used, for instance, to query your database for your profiled races to grab the fields date/track/race/class/distance/surf, to obtain the fractional and final times of the races (assuming wish list #16 is implemented). The Formula Template Editor Race Assignment Filters could be used to filter this data to a particular track. With this information you could, in theory, generate your own average fractional and finish time for each track/class/distance/surf to make your own "pars" for any date range you wanted.

Nathan: It works this way today because there are a lot of 'pointers' that each view references that are not initialized before a card is opened. Accessing uninitialized pointers makes for a big old crash. Now, things can be guarded/modified on a finer level to allow for this, but I'm leary about having to debug the ones that slipped through the cracks for years to come.... I'll check it out. Might not be that bad...


(18) In FV, in the Formula Template Editor, Race Assignment Filters, add the ability to filter the races on a date range.

Nathan: Never thought of that. OK


(19) Add the following FV variables which will return the calculated fraction times for the horse taking into consideration beaten lengths: $ppHFractOne, $ppHFractTwo, $ppHFractThree ($ppHFinalTime already exists).

Nathan: I think we already have these... kind of (I could have added them in 'here and there' without updating any documentation (how nice of me)). This is what we have:

A) ppFractOne, ppFractTwo, ppFractThree,ppFinalTime

The fractional times of the lead horse.

B) ppConvFractOne, ppConvFractTwo, ppConvFractThree, ppConvFractFinal
These are the HORSE's fractions CONVERTED to today's distance.

C) ppHFract2, ppHFract3, etc., where the number is the furlong into the race...

These are the horse times, but we don't have a FractOne, FractTwo, and FractThree. I will add them.

(20) Pull information from the Exotic Results File and the Instant Chart and create a new set of variables for race results accessible in FV for each horse: $rrHFractOne, $rrHFractTwo, $rrHFractThree, $rrHFinalTime, $rrCallStart, $rrCall1, $rrCall2, $rrCall3, $rrFinish $rrBtnLengths1, $rrBtnLengths2, $rrBtnLengthsStretch, $rrBtnLengthsFinish, . Maybe a new template of type "Results", similar to a "Horse" template would make sense. If these were available via FV, I think I would definitely consider purchasing DB Direct because I could make my own race charts and export one line per horse with positions, beaten lengths, fractional times, and finish times.

Nathan: If parsing the instant charts for the race times becomes a reality, then I will definitely add this.

(21) A FV variable to extract weather information from the Instant Chart. Could be used in a race chart db (see (20)). I've always wondered if weather was a factor or not, especially in Chicago where horses run in all 4 seasons of the year.

Nathan: Maybe

(22) A FV variable to extract full sentence race comments for each horse from the Instant chart.

Nathan: Maybe

(23) I know that ppApproxDistB is available (Returns ˜1' if the distance of the race was approximate. Common for turf races with moveable rails). It would be helpful to have FV variable to extract the actual amount (in feet) from the PP that the moveable rail is at in a turf race. On some tracks, depending on how far the rail is moved out, it is a change in distance for routes that should be considered. This could be then used as a turf race bias.

Nathan: I don't think that the data files contain info for how much the rail has been moved. The charts, I think, do. Of course, the info has to be parsed out of them....

(24) Either you open a race card and the Exotic Results file is loaded automatically, or after you already have a race profiled and stored in the Profiler DB, I noticed that ES correctly marks all the late scratches in each race. I guess it gets these from the results file. It would also be helpful if it also made the Jockey changes automatically.

Nathan: That would be great... Of course, the exotic results files do not contain any info about the jockey. Could be parsed from the instant charts, or taken from more expensive results files. I'll check into the parsing option since it seems we'll still have Exotic Results in HTML format... for a while at least.

(25) In SPAT, add the Selection Type "Sim & Prof & Comp". I have found that a horses that are #1 sim, #1 prof, and #1 comp have a good hit% at certain tracks (which is rare) depending on the filters you use. It would be helpful to be able to query your DB using SPAT for this.

Nathan: Will look into it.

(26) In SPAT, add the Selection Type "Prof & Comp".

Nathan: Will look into it.

(27) In SPAT, add the Selection Type "Sim & Comp"

Nathan: Will look into it.


(28) When choosing "Store By Track", in the "Auto-Store" popup window that allows you to pick the dates and tracks, add a checkbox to "auto store race charts". If this checkbox is selected it would auto store the charts of the associated date range and selected tracks if it is located in the correct path <Data Card Root Folder>\<track>\charts\<track>_xx_xx_xx.html. This would save a lot of time manually adding the race charts for each track every day. I am proably not the only person who uses race charts extensively when mining through the PPs and want to see the detail from the PP's race chart via a right click on that PP line.

Nathan: Hope to make this work. Don't know why it doesn't today. Pure laziness perhaps.

(29) Make the "Store Race Charts" function off the "Profiler Database" menu similar to the dialog above, which would allow you to pick the dates and tracks and would auto store the racecharts for the selected date range and track if they are located in the correct path.

Nathan: ok

(30) This is especially useful for users of DBDirect who have "Store Profiler Values" checkboxed in the Profiler Preferences and what to run FV templates through a DB using DB Direct and reference stored profiler values: Have a new series of FV variables which can pull the stored profiler values from the connected Profiler Database. Something like: $hrSimFinishDB, $hrProfValDB, $hrProfRankDB, $hrCompValDB, $hrCompRankDB, $hrTrainerValDB, $hrTrainerRankDB, $hrJockeyValDB, $hrJockeyRankDB, $hrOwnerValDB, $hrOwnerRankDB, $hrSireValDB, $hrSireRankDB, which would pull these stored values (as shown in the chart viewer), otherwise return zero or -1000.

quote:

Originally posted by Jerry Hill:
If you could add a bold option to the various screens it would sure help.