At 02:23 PM 5/13/00 +0000, Ron Wetjen wrote:
>Have been working on the FQP logs ... putting paper logs into NA, and
>sending the .log and .sum files via e-mail to our log checker.
>
>Upon receiving the logs, he's discovered some logs end up missing
>QSO's. In trying to figure out what's going on, I've noticed (depending
>on which word processing program I'm using) the .log and .sum files
>contain what look like square box characters, which seem to be used as
>spaces.
>
>When I edit these "boxes" out, the log data seems to go through intact
>... and when I leave the "boxes" in the log, QSO's seem to be getting
>dropped.
>
>Again, depending what I'm using to view the logs with, I'm either
>getting something like this:
>
>START-OF-LOG: 2.0
>CONTEST: FL-QSO-PARTY
>CALLSIGN: WB4NJV
>OPERATORS: K8DSS, WD4AHZ
>CATEGORY: ALL LOW MIXED
>CLAIMED-SCORE: 2992
>CLUB: Sarasota Emergency Radio Club
>SOAPBOX:
>SOAPBOX:
>NAME: Ron Wetjen
>ADDRESS: 5362 Castleman Drive
>ADDRESS: Sarasota, FL 34232
>
>
>or like this
>
>START-OF-LOG: 2.0
>CONTEST: FL-QSO-PARTY
>CALLSIGN: WB4NJV
>OPERATORS: K8DSS, WD4AHZ
>CATEGORY: ALL LOW MIXED
>CLAIMED-SCORE: 2992
>CLUB: Sarasota Emergency Radio Club
>SOAPBOX: SOAPBOX: NAME: Ron Wetjen
>ADDRESS: 5362 Castleman Drive
>ADDRESS: Sarasota, FL 34232
>
>(There are many of those "box" characters in the "soapbox" area, which
>either show up, or have no affect, as in the example above.)
>
>It seems some programs may handle these characters one way, while other
>programs handle them differently.
>
>My main concern is, are there legitimate QSO's being lost from other
>contest logs, because of this. The number of QSO's ending up missing,
>can range from 2 or 3 to over half the log (granted, the log was only 23
>QSO's ... but only 8 made it to the log checker!)
>
>Very strange.
>
>Ron
I suspect that the problem may be "nul" characters. A nul character has an
ASCII value of zero, as opposed to a space character which has an ASCII
value of 32 decimal.
To illustrate how these might appear, suppose there is a six digit field
for the station callsign. I type in "K8CC", and depending on the program
the field might be "K 8 C C sp sp" or "K 8 C C nul nul". Most text editors
convert nuls to spaces, but many programs (particularly word processors)
treat nuls as unknown characters, usually represented by a box.
There are other possibilities, but overall the best solution is to NEVER
USE A WORD PROCESSOR TO EDIT ASCII FILES. Yeah, I know its more convenient
when your desktop environment is Windows-based, but its been my experience
that you can't count on the assumptions a word processor makes with ASCII
files. I know I've seen wierdness using MS-Word in this area. You really
need to use an ASCII text editor, not a word processor. Even Windows
NotePad is better than a word processor.
73,
Dave/K8CC
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