This week’s bus WTT PDF upload is basically in a new style. Not entirely as there are some old style PDFs, which I think are probably redundant.
First thing to note is that the files for route 353 are corrupt.
As no test file or documentation was made available to outside users (though I suspect the ones accidentally released some months ago are in the same format), I am having to struggle with this as I go along. What differences have I found so far?
FILE TITLE - The Title field, visible and programatically accessible as an extended property under PDF Information (if you have the right software), is now left blank. In order to distinguish successive editions and quickly identify new files I will have to construct something from the info within the file. I think I can do this with a Powershell script but it is a pain.
SERVICE CHANGE - Much more comprehensive information, which is useful.
DAY TYPES - Specials now seem to be denoted by spSa etc rather than sSa. This is a good change as it eliminates the confusion on case insensitive systems with SSa. The first line of the file still uses sSa though!
SERVICE CHANGE - OPTION/VERSION - The previous setup included both of these. Version was most commonly used and could indicate a minor revision or correction. Option was rarer but did vary sometimes. The new setup only has option so how will what would have been versions be dealt with?
PAGE HEADERS AND FOOTERS - No longer present. The header was related to the file title/name. The footer was “Page 3 of 7” or similar.
TRANSIT NODE FOR TIMING POINTS - This now has 5 rather than 4 characters. It is possible that this is the old code prefixed by the latter A (based on looking at a couple of files). No idea why the change has been made.
ORDERING OF PAGES - For the actual times, pages for direction 1 follow each other, then all pages for direction 2. Previously they alternated.
CODES FOR STANDS - These used to be identifiable through the last character being S (with a few tweaks for special cases). The S has changed to T. The H for hesitation points has also been changed to T.
I will post any more changes that I find.
Some of these changes affect triggers for the processing that I do. I don’t think anything is insuperable but it may take some head scratching. Obviously TfL’s internal requirements are what matter but it would have been helpful to have had a heads up.