In Iain M. Banks's Excession there is several discussion between spaceships that are in a format that look like a log file.

(I would like to quote a passage here, but my version of the book is a translation, So I guess it won't help. I would be glad if someone could add one.)

Is there a cheat sheet or something that could help me to extract all the information contained in the headers and other sections of those discussions?