APA Schedule Converter
Introduction
This program runs on Windows. It is free.
It helps to answer the question that APA members always have:
“Where does my team play this week?”
It takes the typical APA schedule which is
very tricky to read and converts it to a collection of
much clearer
HTML tables.
It can also, if you wish, transfer these tables to your APA league web site.
APA members can request weekly email (or text message) reminders of
where their team is playing.
This software was not commissioned by the APA nor is it officially
sanctioned by it. It does, nonetheless, work very well by processing
the schedules produced by the standard APA software
used by all league operators.
Installation
Download the application here.
It is 3 megabytes in size.
It is a standard Microsoft installation file.
Double click to install it.
You will see a desktop icon that looks like a #6 billiard ball.
Instructions
- Generate your league's schedules with your APA software as usual.
Put each division in a separate PDF and place the schedules in a
subfolder by themselves.
- Launch the application from the desktop icon.
- Enter your league name.
- Use the 'Browse' button to navigate to the subfolder of the schedules.
Click on the little plus sign 
to open a folder.
- Click on the 'Convert' button.
The status line (right above the 3 buttons) will tell you
how many schedules it converted.
- Choose the 'View' button to view the resulting HTML schedules.
- You have two choices for publishing the schedules in the new format:
Automatic
- Enter your web site
access information (FTP site, user, password).
- Also enter a directory on that site to contain the schedules.
This directory would be, for example, 'htdocs/schedules'.
It will be created for you if it does not exist.
This directory is relative to the location where ftp first logs in.
BE CAREFUL that you do not overwrite your home page (in other words ... Do Not Scratch!).
- Click on 'Publish'. The status line will show the progress.
Manual
- Transfer the schedules yourself manually –
include all .html files,
the style sheet
style.css, and the
javascript file init.js.
- Point your browser to http://www.yourAPAsite.com/schedules (for example)
to see the easy-to-read schedules online.
- Share the above web address for the schedules with the league members.
Put a link to it at various places on your site. Tell the members
about the email (or text message) reminders.
- Inform the billiard hall owners about the calendar of tallies
for their host site (see the second table on the
index.html page).
This will help them plan for how many tables they'll need to provide
each league match night.
- Finally, for APA Schedule Converter Power Users, note that the
6 balls on the left hand side of the pool-table-styled dialog
can be refreshed with control-R.
Why not have some fun?
Troubleshooting
This converter is dependent on the format of the schedule
files that the standard APA software produces. If that format
should change this program will need
to change as well. It works quite well with the APA software as of June 2010.
If a missing or unknown team number is encountered within the schedule the
converter will display an error message in the status area and stop.
The error needs to be remedied (in the APA software/data) before
the conversion can proceed.
When the schedules are in PDF format a problem can sometimes arise.
If a team or host site name is too long it can run into the next column
and make for trouble. Like this:
One remedy is to generate the division schedule in MS Excel (xls)
format instead. The converter program can read this format as well.
Another remedy is to add a line to the except.txt
file in C:\APA_Sched.
The line should have this format:
team number | team name | host site name | address | city | state | phone
Like this:
42911|Sunday Sinners|Pour House (Roy and Teri's)|3925 E Faries Parkway|Decatur|IL|217-330-6292
This line in the 'except' file will be used instead of the one
in the PDF schedule.
Contact
Sahadev Software (Jon Bjornstad, Aruna Mahadevan)
apa@logicalpoetry.com
831-460-2648
Source
If you are Perl literate you may be interested
in the
source for the program.
Billiard Grook
