Export records with Subsummary Label

[itiming]

Am trying to export multiple records to a .txt file to look like this:

40 Mile Men

1 Howard J 0:45.59

2 Kilpela A 0:48.09

3 Kilpela T 0:50.38

40 Mile Women

1 Davis A 0:58.56

2 Brand K 1:00.18

3 Leukuma W 1:00.43

Where the 40 Mile Men & 40 Mile Women are Subsummary fields (Race Name) and the names listing is a calculated individual record (place last first initial time). I have the individual field calc setup OK, but can not figure out how to bring the subsummary header along with the individual records.

Any assist is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[comment]

There is no such format among the built-in export formats. You could probably build it yourself using a XSLT stylesheet and exporting as XML - but I am not sure why would you want to. What do you plan to do with the resulting file? I am not aware of any application that could read it.

[itiming]

Thanks for the reply. The data is sent to a large display at sporting events. Having the header along with the data allows us to post useful info to the event spectators; such as top 3 in each age group. The file is plain text formatted into space-delimited lines; in this case, 21 characters long. The text file is sent to the scoreboard over a serial connection. The scoreboard displays 5 lines; generally the first line as a header and the remaining 4, as names and their result (rank & time).

Without this ability we are stuck with creating multiple headers, and then selecting each, one-at-a-time and only displaying a few names. For example, here are common age groups:

1-9

10-14

15-19

20-24

25-29, and so on up to 95+

using these as headers we would like to be able to send the top 3 to 10, or so names, as they are the award winners; for example:

1-9

1 Jones, D 1:23:45

2 Smith, R 1:25:50

3 Larson, K 1:26:32

10-14

1 Olson, D 1:13:45

2 Hanson, R 1:15:50

3 Johnson, K 1:16:32

etc, where the age group display is a subsummary, or grouping/label to the listed names.

[comment]

The scoreboard displays 5 lines; generally the first line as a header and the remaining 4, as names and their result (rank & time).

So each exported file has one header only? Do you have a table for the headers - i.e race names and age groups?

we would like to be able to send the top 3 to 10, or so names

How can you send 10 names to a 5-line display?

[itiming]

Yes, there is a table of race names and also a table of age groups--each related with a number key to the racers table.

The text file sent to the scoreboard controller can be any number of lines. The scoreboard pages 4 at a time, holds then for 5 seconds, then pages the next 4 lines

Tx for the reply.

[comment]

I see about three options here, in order of increasing clunkiness:

1. Export as XML, using a custom XSLT stylesheet;

2. Have a script compile the text into a global field, then export the field contents. This may work or not - depending on how well the target application handles a UTF-16 encoded file;

3. Same as #2, but use a "helper" table to parse out the global field (or variable) into individual records - then export from this table.