Diagram Bulk Upload

Introduction

SCDDB organises cribs and diagrams into “crib sources”. A “crib source” is an entity that provides cribs or diagrams to the database, such as “e-cribs” or “Keith Rose’s Diagrams”. A crib source may contain either cribs or diagrams or both, at the discretion of the people in charge of the crib source.

Every crib source has one or more designated “maintainers”, who are generally members of a Django user group. If you try to upload diagrams to a crib source, the diagram upload code checks whether you’re a member of the appropriate group before letting you proceed with the upload.

To make things easier for the maintainers of crib sources containing diagrams, the database accepts uploads of sets of diagrams. These sets of diagrams must be uploaded as a ZIP file containing the actual diagrams in individual SVG “files”. There is also a facilty for specifying the “reliability” of individual diagrams.

If you are accredited as a maintainer of your crib source (ask Anselm to sort this out for you if necessary), you will see a button saying “Upload Diagrams” above the table in the “Diagrams” tab of the crib source display (here is a list of crib sources, including — presumably — yours, so click on that crib source’s name in the overview tab to get to its detail page, where you will find the “Diagrams” tab.) This gets you to a page with a form that lets you select a ZIP file on your local computer and upload it to the database.

ZIP File Structure

Use PK-ZIP, WinZIP or a similar tool to prepare a ZIP file containing the diagrams to be uploaded as individual SVG files (one per dance). Within the ZIP file, the name of each diagram “file” must correspond to the database ID of the dance in question. If you look at a dance’s detail page in the database, the database ID is displayed in grey to the right of the dance name, e.g., for Autumn in Appin, the page will say “Dance: Autumn in Appin 314”, so a diagram for that dance should be called 314.svg. Any files in the ZIP file that do not conform to this naming scheme will be ignored.

(The management is aware that this method is something of a hassle as far as diagram creators are concerned, but long experience with crib collections has taught us that it is fairly hard to match cribs or diagrams to dances in the database automatically, on the strength of dance names only, which tend to be missplet or ambiguous. At least with the database IDs everyone knows where they satnd. Thank you for your cooperation.)

To avoid server overload, there is a 10-MB limit on the size of uploaded ZIP files; if your file is bigger than that, please upload your diagrams in several installments (or ask Anselm to increase the limit).

Diagram Reliability

The database allows diagram authors to assign a “reliability” to each diagram, ranging from 0 to 5 (for the time being). The following table summarises the meaning of the different levels:

(Note that for levels 2-5, “original description” means the wording as per the original publication of the dance by or on behalf of its author, not a random crib from wherever.)

The way to assign reliability ratings for a bulk upload is to include in the ZIP file a plain-text file called RATINGS (all capitals) containing lines of the form

# Ratings
10663      1   Alan J Smith
11583.svg  3   Autumn Wind
2236       2

giving reliability ratings for the diagrams in the upload. Note the following:

• Each line in the ratings file corresponds to a single diagram. It contains two fields separated by white space (spaces or tabs). The first field indicates the diagram, either using the dance ID only or the file name in the upload (with .svg attached). The second field indicates the reliability rating on the scale of 0 to 5 above. The remainder of the line will be ignored.

• It is OK for a diagram in the upload to not have a reliability rating in the ratings file. Conversely, it is OK if there is a reliability rating in the ratings file for a diagram that is not actually part of the upload. This makes it possible to maintain one huge ratings file for all of your diagrams and then just include it wholesale with any diagrams that you upload.

• In the ratings file, lines whose first character is a # will be ignored. Empty lines will also be ignored.

New diagrams without an explicit reliability rating will be assigned reliability “3” (owner checked the diagram) for convenience. We do hope in the interest of users of the database that people who prepare diagrams will check them against the original description of dances, and that the other reliability levels, especially the lower ones, will remain exceptional.

Reliability ratings can also be tweaked individually through the administration interface if you are an accredited database maintainer.