The details

Journal File is Elite’s own journal, read as sentences rather than as JSON. Docking, jumping, taking damage, a station talking to you — the things that happened, in the order they happened.

Directive 47 only ever reads this file. Everything on this reading was written by the game.

Newest first

Both journal readings run newest-first, which is the file’s own order and the opposite of In Ship and Log File. The Newest button knows it: on these two its arrow points up, because that is where the newest line actually is. A control that names a direction has to be right about it.

The two panes

The list of sentences is on the left and the chosen event’s own fields are on the right, pretty-printed exactly as Elite wrote them. The divider between them can be dragged, and where you leave it is remembered.

The two are not redundant. The sentence is prose written by Directive 47 and can be wrong about what an event meant; the fields cannot be, because they are the file. A bug report made from the right-hand pane is worth something.

Searching it

Search behaves differently here than on the other readings. They highlight and step; this one filters the list to the matching lines and tells you how many are left — “12 of 4,318”. There are no steppers, because every line on screen is a hit.

It matches the event’s own name as well as the sentence, which is worth knowing because the thing you are hunting is frequently the name: ShieldState appears nowhere in “Shields back up”, and typing it should not come back empty on the page whose whole job is showing that event.

The Raw switch

The switch marked Raw beside the picker turns the sentences into the file itself — one event per line, the shape a Commander comparing it against Frontier’s own documentation is expecting. It is a reading in its own right, called Raw Journal, and “raw journal” reaches it by voice.

It is deliberately not an entry in the picker: it is the same events seen another way rather than a fourth subject, and two entries would read as two. The switch is in the headset as well as on the desktop.

Where you leave it is where you find it. The switch keeps its position across launches, so a Commander who reads the raw file gets the raw file the next time they open the journal reading, and one who does not never sees it. It is the reading that is remembered, not the page: d47 still opens on the conversation whichever way the switch is set.

Neither journal reading is formatted as markup. A journal carries other players’ text and JSON full of asterisks and underscores, none of which is emphasis, so both are drawn exactly as written.

Merc Coins

A module bought with Merc Coins reads with its Merc Coin price — “Bought a Cargo Rack for 40 Merc Coins” — rather than dropping the cost because Frontier zeroes the credit price for that purchase. Buying a module and storing it straight away names its price the same way, in whichever currency paid for it.

Messages from other people

A station, an NPC or a channel notice draws as the sender and what they said — “Evans Port: Docking request granted.” Those are Frontier’s own words.

A message another Commander typed draws as “Message received”, with their words in the fields pane beside it. That is on purpose. Another player’s text is untrusted input, and a summary line carrying it could be made to read like one of Directive 47’s own event lines. Select the line and you can read the message; it is one click, and it is plainly somebody’s data rather than the page’s prose.

Clearing, and sharing

Clear what is shown is greyed on both journal readings. This is Elite’s file, not Directive 47’s, and there is nothing here of its to empty.

The share button offers this reading to a bug report, alongside the log — the two are the two halves of an incident, which is what the game did and what Directive 47 did with it. What leaves your machine is reviewed by you first.