alpha1 draft (ie. minimum requirements for alpha1)
Hi everyone,
I am proud to announce the first release of my new poker tracking software fpdb (freepokerdb, very imaginative I know ;) ). You may wonder why I bothered when now with HM and PT3 there are at least two excellent packages to choose from.

Three main reasons:
1. Fpdb is free/libre open source software. In short, this means you don't depend on me if sth. is wrong or you want something more in this program as you can freely change it yourself. You also don't have to pay anything for it. If you like it and think I deserve to be paid just drop me a mail ;)
2. HM and PT3 only support holdem. Fpdb (initially) supports Holdem and Omaha, with Stud and Razz mostly implemented
3. HM and PT3 run on Windows only, and for me at least did not work in wine even after installing Mono. Fpdb runs natively on any plattform that has the required software, which will cover roundabout 99.9% of PCs.
	You still need to run Windows or wine to run the actual poker client though.
4. Fpdb won't irritate you with copy prevention measures, e.g. HM will require re-activation after some types of partition change. To be fair I should add that the support is fast, friendly and helpful. Nevertheless I for one just don't appreciate being hassled AFTER I pay.

This is alpha1, as the name indicates it is still at a very early stage. The importer and database are nearing completion but the GUI in particular is not very functional yet and the HUD is missing alltogether. Except for the HUD most of the infrastructure is in place though, now I "just" need to add all the bells and whistles and tune it.

Current feature list:

Interface
=========
- Central interface programs with tabs (similar to Azureus classic)
- Follows (ish) convention on how things are arranged and what they look like.
- Works equally in *nix and Windows (tested on Gentoo GNU/Linux, MacOSX and WinXP)
- Bulk importer for single files, multiple files, or directories (incl recursion)
- Auto-importer
- Profiles (to store different settings - profile path currently hardcoded as the load_profile function is broken)
- Interface freezes whilst importing, but if you want to start using it whilst a big import is running just start another instance.

Backend, Distribution
=====================
- Choice of MySQL/InnoDB or PostgreSQL. (not tested on PostgreSQL)
- It is possible to run the database on one PC, the importer on another, and then access the database with the table viewer or HUD from a third PC. (note: do NOT do this unencrypted over an untrusted network like your employer's LAN or the Internet!)

Site/Game Support
=================
- Initially only full support for PS, FTP will be supported soon
- Supports Holdem, Omaha Hi and Omaha Hi/Lo
- Supports No Limit, Pot Limit, Fixed Limit NL, Cap NL and Cap PL
	Note that currently it does not display extra stats for NL/PL so usefulness is limited for these limit types. Suggestions welcome, I don't play these.
- Supports ring/cash games, SnG/MTT will be supported soon


- Tableviewer (tv) interface to the database. The application is currently single-threaded but I will fix that, in the meantime just start the interface multiple times. Tv takes a history filename and loads the appropriate players' stats and displays them in a tabular format. These stats currently are:
	- VPIP, PFR and Preflop 3B/4B (3B/4B is not quite correct I think)
	- Raise and Fold % on flop, turn and river. Fold only counts hands when someone raised.
	- Number of hands this is based on.
	- SD/F (aka WtSD, proportion of hands where player went to showdown after seeing flop)
	- W$wSF (Won $ when seen Flop)
	- W$@SD (Won $ at showdown)
	For all stats it also displays how many hands this particular is based on
		
- You can edit/add whatever you like, it's all python and SQL. The code should be fairly straightforward I think and I put some notes into readme-dev.txt but feel free to ask.

If you can live with alpha software please give this a go and send any feedback, feature requests/suggestions, bug reports and animal names to steffen@sycamoretest.info or pick one of the contact methods listed in readme-overview.txt or reply to this post.

IMPORTANT: The database format will undergo more changes and at this point I am not planning to write a converter so please keep your history files so you can re-import when necessary. Independent of this you should always keep the original raw files in a safe place with any tracking software. 


License
=======
Trademarks of third parties have been used under Fair Use or similar laws.

Copyright 2008 Steffen Jobbagy-Felso
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
Version 1.2 as published by the Free Software Foundation; with
no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
Texts. A copy of the license can be found in fdl-1.2.txt

The program itself is licensed under AGPLv3, see agpl-3.0.txt