It's true, tr is dying. After all these years, it may not be possible to
plug all the holes so it will run reliably in everyone's DOS windows or
on machines manufactured after 1995. It is inevitable. It happens to old
software. I, too, hope that someone comes up with a nice wrapper and
simple set of guidelines that extend the life of tr, but even so,
eventually it will become the tool of only a few of us die-hards.
I'm actually a relative tr newbie, having switched to it in order to log
the Sprint just a few years ago, just before a few other programs
figured it out. I've been delighted by its flexibility and appalled by
its complexity and environmental sensitivity. For the last NCCC meeting,
W0YK organized a logging software shootout with advocates for each major
program describing, defending and proselytizing for their favored
program. He couldn't find a good advocate for tr even though we thought
it was the most widely used. I finally agreed to speak on the subject,
given some expert assistance from friends who know the program much
better than I ever will. I described it as "the logging program everyone
loves to hate." My bottom line is that if you can make it run and keep
it running and tune it deftly for each event, then it will increase your
score more than any other package. If you don't use it right, however,
it will send you blithering off to the insane asylum. And this becomes
more true every year for more contesters.
Our friend will die. As soon as one of the Windows programs gets to
about 60% of tr's feature set, the end will come quickly. Which one will
it be? Writelog, N1MM, miLog? The race has already begun. The betting
window is still open.
/Rick N6XI
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