Worldwide Soaring Turnpoint Exchange

Contributions

There are many different sorts of data that are currently accomodated in the "Worldwide Soaring Turnpoint Exchange" data base; however only the waypoint name, latitude, and longitude are necessary, and they can be submitted in any format; "degrees", "degrees and minutes", "degrees, minutes, and seconds", or even "radians". Additional information, e.g. description of the waypoint, elevation, frequency and other airport information, etc are most welcomed. We can accept data in "virtually" any format. ASCII text, one waypoint per line with a distinguishing character like "tab" or "," separating the fields, is simplest, but hardly required. The data can be in any order.

If you don't already have your waypoint data in a file, may I suggest the following interchange structure, which I can import immediately and with no work at this end!!

Objectives

The idea is to have a simple format that contest organizers, individuals who want a personalized waypoint collection, as well as stewards of regional waypoint collections, can maintain in whatever layout and with whatever tools they find most convenient. The layout [ format, syntax ] must allow the individuals to store all of the data that they wish, in the form that they wish, and then to be read without change by the "Worldwide Soaring Turnpoint Exchange" to generate the various flight recorder, flight computer, GPS, and scoring program files that are then made available on the WWW or provided back to the contributor. The intention is to "eventually" provide online generation of the various formats for the user; i.e. the user submits a WSTX compatible file and selects the import format that they wish, and the files are generated immediately. It is possible - and desireable - that the various software providers may offer the capability to import this, or a functionally similar IGC standard, in addition to their existing, individual, data import formats. A prime user, that I have in mind, is the contest organizer who changes some of the data the night before a contest, and who would like to provide all of the contestants with files that can be uploaded to their flight units immediately. A flexible, self-identifying structure was adopted three years

Requirements

General Specifications

File Names

They are completely arbitrary. However, limiting oneself to the old DOS standard of 8 characters with a 3 character "extension" simplifies some displays. The extension is arbitrary, but we use "*.STX" to readily identify the Worldwide Soaring Turnpoint eXchange import files.

Coordinate Specification

Character encoding

The default character set is ISO-8859-1, which works for electronic transmission and for display, and which includes the following: ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © ª « ¬ ­ ® ¯ ° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¸ ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿ À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ð Ñ Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö × Ø Ù Ú Û Ü Ý Þ ß à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ð ñ ò ó ô õ ö ÷ ø ù ú û ü ý þ ÿ . The HyperTextMarkupLanguage equivalents - e.g. either è or è for è - are also fine. The encoding can be changed from this default, to handle e.g. the polish or hungarian character sets. Note that some of these characters, e.g. ¶, don't have a convenient simple character representation and are just ignored! Stick to the accented characters.

An example

The default field separator is the "tab" character, which has been rendered visible in the following by displaying it as <T>. 

* Everything after * on a line is ignored; it's a "comment" like this entire line

* Lines starting with a $ are meta-data; information that applies to the entire file
*      None are required

$Site<T>Minden, Nevada * Nice to know the name, but not required
$Latitude<T>N * Specifying this saves you from entering it for each waypoint
$Longitude<T>W

*-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* The first line that is non-blank, non-comment, non-meta-data definition
*    defines the contents of the columns that follow with the waypoint data
* It can be placed anywhere before the waypoint data starts.
*    Placing it as the first line of the file can be helpful if the
*    data is maintained by a spreadsheet program, like Excel, which
*    allows the first row to be frozen at the top of the display so when
*    you've scrolled down several screens you can still see the column definitions
*    It's placed just before the waypoint data here to "improve" readability.
*-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name<T>Latitude degrees<T>Latitude minutes<T>Latitude seconds<T>Longitude degrees<T>Longitude minutes<T>Longitude seconds

*-------- Here is the waypoint data -------------------------------------------

Air Sailing<T> 39 <T> 51 <T> 18 <T> 119 <T> 42 <T> 4

*  Note the accent in Alturas, which is important for many languages

Altúras    <T> 41 <T> 28 <T> 49 <T> 120 <T> 34 <T> 5
Austin     <T> 39 <T> 27 <T> 37 <T> 117 <T> 12 <T> 0
Basalt     <T> 38 <T>  0 <T> 37 <T> 118 <T> 16 <T> 29

Some additional examples:

If you would like to check and see if your file will be read the way you want, you can try this link which will upload your file, and display the result. Try downloading one of the examples above, editing it and then uploading it to see how it is displayed. Choose the layout that is most convenient for you, and just edit in your data and submit it.

If you really like this sort of stuff, here is some PERL that does the parsing.

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Please contact John Leibacher with any suggestions concerning this material.