Sd is a square dance caller's helper. The program assists you in writing sequences for Western square dancing by doing the checker pushing. You tell the program what call you want to call next, and it computes the resulting setup and shows it to you.
Sd is intended to be used to write challenge-level dances where the sequences are often complex and the checker pushing tedious and error-prone. Most challenge callers write out the sequences they will call before they get to the dance, unlike Mainstream callers, who often invent the sequences on the fly from the stage.
Sd knows nothing about timing, body flow, or esthetics.
This program is not appropriate for Traditional square dancing. A good Traditional square dance sequence requires, among other things, extremely accurate control of timing and phrasing. The program is not capable of this.
Since the emphasis here is on checker pushing, you will find various
Mainstream staples missing, such as Circle Left, Grand Square, and
Do-Si-Do. Since these calls are zeros, there is no
reason to have them in a checker-pushing program. However, if you
wish to write sequences containing calls such as these, you can use the
insert a comment command to write them into the sequence.
In short, if you are writing a Traditional or Mainstream dance, you may find that this program is not for you.
It is most emphatically not the goal of Sd to present a polished graphical display of the dancers, or to show animation. The goal is to write sequences so that you can create pleasing animation among live people. If you want to enjoy the esthetic visual patterns created by square dance choreography, we recommend that you turn off your computer and go to a dance.
The use of this program is not a good way to learn to call or to improve your calling or dancing skills. In fact, reliance on a computer program to write material could easily make you a worse caller, or interfere with your attempts to improve your calling skills.
The knowledge of calls and concepts that this program can provide is only a tiny part what you need to learn in order to be a good caller or dancer. To call successfully, you need to master many skills, such as timing, flow, judging difficulty, floor interaction, and choosing precisely the right words to say. This last skill is as important at high levels as at low levels. Subtle differences in the words you choose, and their timing and inflection, can have a tremendous influence on the success of the dancers. Sd attempts to print the correct words in all cases, but you will only succeed if you have a deep understanding of what the words mean and how they should be delivered. That understanding can only be obtained through a great deal of experience calling at that level.
If you do not have a good understanding of a call or concept, such that you could explain it to a dancer after the tip is over, you should not use it. Do not rely on Sd to provide the necessary insight into challenge dancing.
For beginning callers in particular, the best thing to do is to receive instruction from a qualified teacher or coach, and to practice.
We recognize that people sometimes have to learn a level in a tape group without benefit of any human expertise at that level, and that such people may have no choice but to rely on a computer program as one of their sources of information. This is an undesirable situation, and we believe that computer programs should not be used as references except in emergencies. There is an enormous body of knowledge about the accepted usage of various calls and concepts. That body of knowledge is generally possessed by all competent dancers and callers at a given level. No computer program can possibly possess that knowledge. In particular, computer programs should not be used for resolving controversial issues.
This is not to say that computers have no place in the education and training of callers. A number of caller training programs have been written that may help you develop such skills as formation management and sight resolving. Sd is not suitable for this.
Quality, correctness, and reliability are fundamental and extremely important design objectives of Sd. Before any version is released, it passes very rigorous diagnostic tests. These tests include verification of large amounts of C4 material from recent National Advanced and Challenge Conventions, and other C4 weekends. The elusive but ever-sought-after goal is to make a program that
We have endeavored to use the current Callerlab lists and definitions as the source for call and concept names and definitions wherever possible. Where this is not possible, either because Callerlab does not publish lists or definitions at all levels, or because a definition is unclear in some area, we have used other well-respected encyclopedias, along with our best attempts to make things clear and sensible. Particularly at extremely high challenge levels, where there are no standardization bodies to rein in callers' tendencies to change the definitions or usage of calls, concepts, and fundamental assumptions, it is not always possible to do this to everyone's satisfaction.
Spelling variations that would be insignificant in normal calling become a serious problem for computer programs. We have attempted to use the spelling in official lists where possible, but sometimes even these lists are careless. In such cases, we have attempted to correct the errors where possible, using a variety of sources. Priority is given to those sources that have shown the greatest care in their editing.
It is a known fact that challenge callers routinely call various "popular"
calls that are not on the official or semi-official lists. In an attempt to
allow this, while maintaining the appearance of strict compliance with
the lists, Sd has two special levels c3x and c4x. These contain
the calls that are currently believed to be called at C3 and C4 but are
not yet on the semi-official C3 list or the various informal C4 compilations
of "commonly used" calls.
It is generally not necessary to run the program at either of these levels. When you run at C3, C3X calls may be used. When you run at C4, C4X calls may be used. Whenever such a call is used, a warning is printed. (If you explicitly run the program at C3X or C4X, you may use the calls without getting a warning.)
The phenomenon of "clueless clicking", that is, using a computer to generate challenge choreography that one doesn't really understand, is by now well-known. There are very few more effective ways to exhibit your ignorance and incompetence as a caller. High level challenge dancers are extremely sophisticated in their ability to detect this.
If dancers didn't understand what you meant by something that you called, they may ask you about it after the tip is over. The answer "I meant whatever the computer did" is never an acceptable answer to such a question. If you can't give an answer in terms of your understanding of how the calls and concepts really work, or if you don't agree with the program's interpretation, you shouldn't be calling that material.
Not all callers exercise good judgement in their calling, and occasionally some controversial, or even illegal, things are called. It is not possible for a computer program to enforce good judgement or good taste. Sd nevertheless sometimes prints warning messages of various types to alert less-experienced callers that something might be unusually difficult or controversial, or might violate some definition or some commonly accepted notion.
These warning messages are intended for callers less competent than you. Ignore them.
You can prevent the program from displaying or printing these warning messages
by giving the toggle nowarn mode command. This turns on (or turns
off if it was already on) the "no warnings" mode. See section Changing Modes.
You can also place a line "no_warnings" in the
"options" section of the `sd.ini' initialization file
(see section Option Control) or start the program with a command-line option
"-no_warnings" (note the leading hyphen). See section Command-Line Options.
Several user interfaces are available. They come in two general types, and the program name is different for these types.
Sdtty is the name of the program that uses a character-oriented keyboard
interface. Calls are selected by typing their names.
Sdtty runs on Unix-like systems and under
DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, and NT on PC's.
Sd is the name of the program that uses menus and a graphical user
interface. Calls may be selected by clicking with the mouse on the chosen
menu item. You may also type calls in from the keyboard. In fact, Sd
is keyboard-compatible with Sdtty---you can use it almost exactly the
same way. Sd runs on Windows 95, Windows 98, and NT on PC's.
A somewhat different version runs on Unix systems running the X Window System interface.
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