Another T5SS Data Drop: many new sectors In Review

The Vargr Extents and Julian Protectorate get some love in the latest T5SS data drop, with the following sectors newly "in review":

• Tuglikki (by David Drazul)
• Provence (by David Drazul)
• Windhorn (by John G. Wood)
• Meshan (by Michael R. Mikesh)
• Mendan (by Michael R. Mikesh, from Challenge #49)
• Amdukan (by Michael R. Mikesh, from Challenge #52)

Also, way off on the Spinward edge of charted space, Group One's Theta Borealis – the last of the GDW "land grant" sectors – is now in review.

Some data corrections elsewhere as well. As always, check the sector data history on GitHub for the gruesome details, and provide feedback on the data on COTI.

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T5SS Review Update: Far Frontiers!

My favorite sector, Far Frontiers, has started review by the T5SS!

The sector is the home of the FASA adventures such as the Sky Raiders trilogy. The Jungleblut subsector was detailed in Trail of the Sky Raiders. The Alsas subsector was detailed by Bill Fawcett in "Privateer", an article in Gameplay magazine. Dale Kemper produced a manuscript including these details and fleshing out the rest of the rimward half of the sector as a manuscript intended for publication by FASA, but it didn't make it to print before FASA ended support for Traveller. It was later published (with minor changes) in ARES Magazine Special Edition #2, and republished in The Traveller Chronicle, issues 2 through 4.

The sector is called Afachtiabr by the Zhodani who dominate the coreward half, which was detailed by James "GypsyComet" Kundert and published in The Traveller Chronicle, issues 5 through 8.

Art Gorski has put together a comprehensive list of references to the Far Frontiers sector over at RPGGeek. The biggest change in the T5SS version from earlier visits to the sector is that the Zhodani's Colonnade Administrative District is now known as the Colonnade Province of the Zhodani Consulate. This region extends into the neighboring Beyond sector, also in review by the T5SS.

Issues and feedback appreciated here, or on COTI.

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T5SS Data Drop - March 2015

DonM sent out a new T5SS data drop, adding Spica to the set of "in reviewed" sectors, and graduating the Aslan sectors like Riftspan Reaches, Ealiyasiyw and Dark Nebula out of review to "official".

Other tidbits from the drop:

• Hive Federation now has T5SS allegiance code: HvFd
• Embassies have have base code E
• Base code X, previously reserved for Zhodani Relay Station, is slated to be replaced by W, which will indicate any Way Station, not just an Imperial Scout Way Station. That's not entirely reflected in the data yet.

Enjoy!

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T5SS Data Update - April/May 2014

The new data is now live!

Summary of changes:

• T5SS sectors now have 4-character allegiances; these are visible on the map and in tab-delimited and column-delimited data files. The new allegiance codes are mapped to 2-character codes when "SEC" files are output or at low scales. Codes are documented at http://travellermap.com/doc/secondsurvey
• T5SS sectors now have 1- or 2-character base codes, e.g. NS for Naval Base and Scout Base, when shown in tab-delimited and column-delimited files. They are mapped to 1-character codes when "SEC" files are output. Codes are documented at http://travellermap.com/doc/secondsurvey
• Booklet and World Data Sheets now use the newfangled allegiance and base codes
• The following sectors are under review as part of the T5SS. The data is updated to conform to T5SS formats, but the data is still subject to heavy change.
• Aktifao
• Dark Nebula - as seen in GDW's Atlas of the Imperium and DGP's Solomani & Aslan
• Ealiyasiyw - as seen in GDW's Atlas of the Imperium and DGP's Travellers Digest #18
• Hlakhoi - as seen in GDW's Atlas of the Imperium
• Iwahfuah - as seen in GDW's Atlas of the Imperium
• Riftspan Reaches - as seen in GDW's Atlas of the Imperium and DGP's Travellers Digest #19
• Staihaia'yo - as seen in GDW's Atlas of the Imperium
• Uistilrao
• Ustral Quadrant
• Tab-delimited files are now assumed to be UTF-8 (previously, was Windows-1252)
• And, of course, nearly all of the sectors covered by the T5SS have had some tweaks.

This will doubtless have introduced issues visible on the site (e.g. borders and routes that need tweaking) and due to the extensive code changes it's likely bugs have crept in that will affect booklet/poster creation. Let me know here or via email and I'll try and get them fixed ASAP.

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It's here

The stuff I promised in my last post is now live.

• Cleaned up API URLs and "semantic" URLs
• You can now POST MSEC metadata to the poster/jumpmap APIs 
• A blather of additional support for T5 data.

And perhaps least interesting if you're a user of the site - unless I get run over by a cable car or something - is that the source code to travellermap.com is now up on github.

Also:

• Slipped in a few bug fixes. Probably slipped in a few bugs, too. Let me know.
• Added a ton more tests (unit tests, API tests).
• I still need to post T5 data format documentation. (Writing good documentation is much harder and time consuming than writing code.)
• The old-style SEC data output has been changed to match the column widths from the ancient GEnie data drop. This means names get truncated and all that fun stuff. If this breaks anything that consumes the data I would recommend changing to consume the tab-delimited data, which is inherently more flexible.

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Coming soon: Open Source, T5 Data, RESTful URLs, MSEC parsing

I'm taking a week off from work to catch up on personal projects that require more than the usual 20 minutes a day of unbroken concentration I can scrounge up. For TravellerMap.com my big goal is getting the code open sourced, up on GitHub. As a prelude to that I needed to do some cleanup, such as moving some authentication strings out of the code itself, and general polishing. Don't expect it to be beautiful, though!

A few things got done as part of this process:

• More RESTful URLs will be added, with the ugly SomeAPI.aspx URLs relegated to legacy. For a hint of what this might look like (if you're not familiar with the terminology) look at a COTI thread on RESTful Traveller APIs. 
• Nit: it won't be truly RESTful as the site is stateless, so there's no state to transfer. 
• I've implemented T5 "Second Survey" data parsing and a formal format description. Short answer: column-based, but variable width fields with a header that self-documents field widths.
• I've implemented support for sec2pdf's MSEC file format. Not every feature (like label tweaks) is supported, but it will save you from learning the XML metadata format.
• Added honest-to-goodness unit tests for a handful of things. 
• Converted most of the C# to use System.Linq where possible to make the code more readable.
• Squashed various bugs

Expect shiny things over the next few days, and as always forgive the mess.

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New T5 Data Drop

Another T5 Second Survey data drop from Don McKinney. This one rolls in updated data for Ziafrplians and Gvurrdon, and fixes a few glitches like extra TL-G worlds that sharp-eyed users have noticed.

I've also rewritten parts of the page that display dynamic data - search results and the credits/links at the bottom - as well as the booklet generator to use Handlebars.js. I had been using JsonT but wanted to move to a more modern template system. Handlebars is derived from Mustache but supports paths which I needed. This should not have changed anything except for a slight performance improvement, but as usual let me know if I broke something.

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T5 Second Survey Data

As part of an ongoing development process for Traveller 5 the data set for all worlds in the Imperium are getting reviewed. With help from Don McKinney, the latest data is now live on the site. Thanks to everyone who's been contributing nitpicks and reporting errors - this information has been fed back into the process to help make sure the new data set is as high quality as possible.

The following sectors have been updated, baselined at 1105:

• Alpha Crucis
• Antares
• Core
• Corridor
• Dagudashaag
• Daibei
• Delphi
• Deneb
• Diaspora
• Empty Quarter
• Fornast
• Glimmerdrift Reaches
• Gushemege
• Hinterworlds
• Ilelish
• Ley
• Lishun
• Magyar
• Massilia
• Old Expanses
• Reaver's Deep
• Reft
• Solomani Rim
• Spinward Marches
• Trojan Reach
• Verge
• Vland
• Zarushagar

In addition, the following tweaks have been made:

• Added "Reavers' Deep" and "Reavers Deep" as aliases
• IFRAME no longer steals focus (which fixes the API page to not scroll down on load)
• Speaking of the API page, it now links to the correct AotI coverage area
• Fix Egyrn Subsector's name (thanks to Makoto MACHIDA for commenting)

Many of the data changes will be intentional, but obviously with this volume of cleanup there will be further glitches, so start the bug reports coming!

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