6 Common Arbiters Tasks with Emacs.

The recommended way to manage a tournament with Arbitools is through a .trf tournament file. You can edit it manually or with the Arbitools commands from the Emacs menu options under “Arbitools”. Every different kind of tournament is really the same in terms of the .trf FIDE file. Round robin, swiss, team, etc. In team tournaments an extra section is added at the end of the file. But it is not really necessary for elo administration. I think you could send a team tournament file in the same format as individual files. Sometimes, team tournament software is very problematic. They are usually necessary depending on your federation, because you may need to maintain the webpage from the software in the official federation site, but you can always work with the .trf file and import the data in your software before you upload it. The power of Arbitools is that you will be able to write a tournament report even if you are having troubles with your software.

To create a .trf file, you can use the option in the menu and change the data according to your tournament, or use your favourite tournament management software. If you name your file ending in .trf, the arbitools-mode will be automatically set in Emacs. In case you name the file with something else (.txt), for example, you will need to type “M-x arbitools-mode” (“Alt-x” and then “arbitools-mode”).

I recommend that the first thing you do is create a .csv file, with the header described in the “File Formats” section (See File Formats), with the data for your tournament. It can be useful for several purposes.

Summing up, use Emacs and Arbitools to maintain your .trf text file and optionally, import the data in your favourite software to get pairings and update to the internet site.

You can find more details in the “Usage” section (See Usage).