jlimperg/opdtab

Tabbing software for OPD debating tournaments

OPDtab

OPDtab is the premier (and, as far as I'm aware, only) tabbing software for debating competitions in the format Offene Parlamentarische Debatte (OPD), used primarily in German-speaking countries.

User Documentation

This document contains technical documentation only. A user's guide (in German) consisting mostly of video tutorials is available at the project's old Google Code website. Beware that the guide is for an older version, so some details will differ; however, most of the content is still relevant to current OPDtab.

Installation

1. Download a binary archive or build OPDtab yourself, as described below.
2. Unpack the archive in a directory of your choice.
3. Install the dependencies listed below.
4. On Windows, execute OPDtab.exe. On Linux, execute opdtab.

Dependencies

1. .NET Framework 4.0/Mono
   1. Linux: Usually a package named 'mono' or something similar. Usually preinstalled. Should also be pulled in as a dependency of gtk-sharp below. Direct download available from the Mono project
   2. Windows: Installer. Usually preinstalled.
2. Gtk# for .NET, version 2
   1. Linux: Usually a package named 'gtk-sharp' or similar. Direct download available from the Mono project.
   2. Windows: Installer.
3. LaTeX
   1. Linux: TeXLive, should be provided by your distribution's package manager. The TeXLive distribution is usually split into multiple packages; install them all to make sure that the PDF export works.
   2. Windows: MiKTeX. Either choose the full installation or make sure that MiKTeX can download missing packages as required.

Building

Before anything else, install the dependencies listed above. If you are on Linux and your distribution provides separate 'developer' packages, install those for gtk-sharp.

Linux

Building requires the Mono IDE Monodevelop or its command line frontend mdtool. From the command line, use

mdtool build OPDtab.sln

to build the project and

mdtool build Packages.mdproj

to generate binary archives in the Packages directory.

To generate release binary packages, use the mkrelease.sh script. See the usage notes at the top of that file for details.

Other Operating Systems

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the C# toolchains on other OSs. Help in extending this documentation would be much appreciated.

License

This software is made available under the terms and conditions of the General Public License version 3, the full text of which can be found in the LICENSE file.

Contact

OPDtab was written primarily by Andreas Neiser and is currently maintained by Jannis Limperg. Please use the issue tracker for bug reports or questions. Contributions of any nature are always most welcome and may be submitted in any form you find convenient.

opdtab's Issues

Fix Linux launch script on Ubuntu

The launch script currently invokes mono without specifying which runtime version to use. On Ubuntu's version of Mono, this apparently leads to it defaulting to .NET 2.0, but we need 4.0.

Exception when saving tournament

When starting and immediately closing a fresh install of OPDtab, the current tournament will not be saved. The error message states that this is due to TeamData not implementing Add(Object), which is supposed to be required for XML serialisation.

mono 4.4.1.0
gtk-sharp 2.12.21

Crash when adding debater

When starting OPDtab from a fresh install, clicking the "Add" button in the "Debaters" window crashes the programme.

mono 4.4.1.0
gtk-sharp 2.12.21

This applies to all current binary releases (1.0.6 through 1.1.3).

Link to this issue tracker in README

Migrate user documentation from Google Code

Chair feedback is unnecessary

Apparently there is little interest in having chairs give or receive feedback.

Change of debater name not reflected in existing rounds

Changing the name of a team member leads to inconsistent data for existing rounds: A debater with the old name is still present, and a debater with the new name is listed as not assigned to a room.

Version 1.1.5, both Linux and Windows

No LaTeX escaping for PDF outputs

Due to the lack of LaTeX escaping when rendering feedback sheets, tabs etc., some characters cannot be used in team names without garbling the output. (Technically the same goes for speaker names, but LaTeX special characters are not commonly used there.)

Release generation doesn't work reliably

It seems like Debug binaries must be generated from inside Monodevelop before Release packages can be compiled (why??), and even then mdtool apparently sometimes forgets to actually add anything to the Linux package...

Specify dependencies in README

Feedback forms are not ordered by room

Ordering feedback forms by room rather than type would make their distribution much more convenient for tournament organisers.

Feedback forms show incorrect rooms

Apparently the room number is never updated when generating forms for multiple rooms, so it always shows the first one.