On Jan 9, 2007, at 9:59 PM, Ron Notarius W3WN wrote:
> The only reason we have this minor problem (and it is a minor
> problem) is
> that those who wrote the robot software and/or Cabrillo specs never
> allowed
> for the possibility that a signal report wouldn't be part of the
> exchange.
This is absolutely not true. There are many contests who have created
Cabrillo-compatible
formats that use a signal report. The big problem occurred when the
contest sponsor
removed the signal report from the contest without removing it from
their Cabrillo format.
Big deal? Could be. Sounds more like a programming challenge to me.
Depending on
what follows the RST field, one could actually detect its presence
(or lack thereof) when
the next non-white space character is picked up. Yeah, this would be
in the robot/scoring
software, and it's a band-aid, but it would resolve the problem.
There is very little wrong with the Cabrillo format. It, like the
thousand of well-documented
communications protocols that use the same sort of format, works
well. Programmers don't
need a fancy DTD for it, just like we don't really need a DTD to
implement IP, TCP, X.25,
AX.25 or any of hundreds of other protocols. A move to XML might be
interesting, but it
is definitely not needed, nor would it be desirable for all the robot/
logger programmers
creating software. There may be "lots" of XML tools around, but the
learning curve for them
(especially the XML interpreters on the various platforms) is rather
steep.
If there really is a problem it is with developers who don't take the
specification literally,
and make "little" changes that cause their code to create Cabrillo-
like files that aren't really
Cabrillo compatible. Perhaps we need a facility to validate the
output data in order to
certify a Cabrillo implementation. But we would need that same
facility for an XML
implementation or any other. This is getting a bit much and way too
troublesome for
developers. The bottom line is this: if you find a problem with the
Cabrillo, ADIF, XDIF or
anything else output by your logging software, complain to the
developer. THEY should
fix it.
Now, I agree with Tree. This topic has been beaten to death. Next,
please...
- Jack Brindle, W6FB
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