Chapter 8. Viewing Narratives
- Table of Contents
- 8.1. Introduction to narrative data
- 8.2. Viewing narrative data
8.1. Introduction to narrative data
8.1.1. Introduction
The term Narrative Data is used within Debrief to refer to time-stamped textual data recorded during an exercise.
Typically this data would be narrative data recorded to provide an overview of events within an exercise serial, but an equally valid use of the facility would be for a textual record of information exported from a recording device. An example of this could be control messages returned from a weapon, or readings taken from an onboard sensor.
Once the data is loaded into Debrief, it is displayed in a list window - with one entry per line. When stepping through the data the "current" entry is highlighted, but the user is also able to double-click on an entry to move the Debrief step time to the time this entry was recorded.
In addition to changing the Debrief step time, the user is also able to change the format of the data in the DTG column, and elect whether to view only the first line of data or the full entry.
8.1.2. Preparing the data
Narrative data is loaded into Debrief using the following file format:
;NARRATIVE: YYMMDD HHMMSS TTT.TTT XX..XX ;; dtg, track name, narrative entry
This line is composed of the following fields:
| ;NARRATIVE: | Leader identifier, to indicate that this is a narrative entry | |
| YYMMDD HHMMSS: | DTG for this narrative entry | |
| TTT..TTT | The name of the source vessel or sensor for this narrative entry | |
| XX..XX | The text of this narrative entry, up to the end-of-line marker. |
The narrative data can be located in a .REP file of its own, or together with other Debrief track and annotation data.
8.1.3. Loading the data
Narrative data is loaded into Debrief in the same way as other data, by dragging and dropping, or using the button.