Ken, a hint (also to all other users of CT and WordPerfect). After doing
WRITELOG, you can import *.ALL (or any other band log, for that matter)
into WordPerfect 5.0 or 5.1 and set the font to Courier 12 point. This
will automatically make the entire log come out correctly (except for
some page breaks, which is because CT inserts automatic page breaks).
Next, turn on page numbering (if you turn on page numbering BEFORE
setting your desired font, the page numbers will be in the prior font!
NOW you know why your page numbers never look right!).
In editing the log, you will find that you will probably have to edit the
headers on each page (you can also set WP to do auto-replace of the
headers) to remove such ridiculous things as Multi-Single (in FD???!!) and
maybe the bands and modes (*.ALL is your allband log!). Otherwise, other
editing will only be fixing typing mistakes when somebody typed the wrong
thing, such as a section abbreviation that CT did not like or that is
incorrect, like SD for San Diego instead of SDG. Obviously, since there
are no multipliers in FD, you can do this in your word-processor's log
without affecting your score!
You can then either call in another portion of your log such as the dupe
sheets, or you can save and do dupe sheets separately. I prefer to create
one big file with everything all together. Courier 12 also works well for
dupe sheets, although CT obviously only creates 60-line pages;
therfore, Courier 10 works OK for dupe sheets, too, and Courier 12 just
leaves some extra space at the bottom of the page. On dupe sheets, you
can delete the very first character on each page, which I believe is an
ASCII character to switch your pin-head printer into and out of
compressed-print; if you print using a laser printer, you won't need that
character and can delete it (if you don't delete it, it will show up on
the dupe sheet!). You will find another such character immediately in front
of the first call on the dupe sheet, and can omit it for laser printing,
as well.
I have never succeeded in laser-printing the breakdown sheets correctly;
all of the columns get skewed no matter what font I use. Since they
aren't needed for log submissions, it doesn't matter anyway. The same
goes for VHF QSO Party grid multipliers; the columns get skewed using a
laser printer.
Finally, the summary sheet prints fine in either Courier 10 or 12. However,
the format of the CT summary sheet is nowhere near the required
"close-facsimile" of the ARRL's summary sheet, so why bother? If you don't
have a copy of the ARRL's summary, you can get it by FTPing to
<oak.oakland.edu>, in the subdirectory /pub/hamradio/arrl/infoserver;
look for the file "FD.FRM" which is the FD summary sheet, and which includes
all of the bonus point categories.
I'm sure I've left out a couple of other editing things, but the above
covers the basics. It will take you a number of hours to do a complete
editing job, especially if you have several thousand QSOs and a lot of
corrections to make in the log sheets. When you first pull in the log and
after WP converts it to WP format, immediately save it to something so
when you screw it up irretrievably the first couple of times, you can
save a few minutes by throwing-away the messed-up log and retrieving the
original. As you do your editing and before you do any major editing change,
save it again so you don't have to restart it from the beginning in the
event of a catatrophe (for WP/DOS, this is done easily with F10).
Word for Windows sucks, and will NOT import non-Word files with columns such
as log sheets without totally skewing the columns. This happens because
Word uses some weird formula to automatically calculate character spacing
based upon the width of the character. I always use full justification,
which may be why the spacing gets screwed up. I haven't tried using only
left-justification; that may avoid the column skewing, but I strongly
doubt it. Don't even waste your time trying to use Word for logs. It may
be that if CT wrote the logs using indent instead of blank spaces to
separate columns, it would be possible to use Word easily. It may even be
possible to do a "search-replace" to replace column spaces with indents.
If anybody else has problems using WP 5.0 or 5.1 (DOS only) for CT logs,
I'll be happy to try to help. 73, Steve KO0U/4 <sharrison@sysplan.com>
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