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Re: [WriteLog] NAQP CW Module Dangerous Behavior

To: Writelog Forum <writelog@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [WriteLog] NAQP CW Module Dangerous Behavior
From: "Wayne, W5XD" <w5xd@writelog.com>
Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 03:39:22 +0000
List-post: <mailto:writelog@contesting.com>
> The argument in the Writelog documentation for Web-Update-Data-Files only 
> affecting the reported score and mults is false. If the exchange is altered 
> when the log is converted to Cabrillo then you can be penalized for a 
> miscopied 
> exchange and lose both the QSO and mult. For instance, logging DC which is 
> emitted as MD in the Cabrillo file.
I don't argue with anything posted on this thread. The quote above is
bit that has the highest priority to fix. That is, the documentation has
to agree with the behavior. As noted above, it does not. Now I'll think
out loud about how to approach that.

Note that you can do the File/web-update AFTER the contest, exit and
restart WL, and it will now generate the right Cabrillo. For technical
reasons having to do with the way WL's installer works, upgrading
WriteLog does NOT update the data files. Only File/web-update does that
to an existing WL install.

I'll have to scan the rest of our contest modules, but NAQP appears on
first glance to be unique in its conversion of what you copied into what
it matches in the WL's namedmul.ini file. I don't have a detailed
history of why that behavior got into the module, but it doesn't feel
like something I put in there because I woke up one day thinking it
would be a good idea. Instead, I think it got in there because somebody
(or some log checking program) complained that (under the old NAQP
rules) that MDC or DC is not a valid QTH, but folks were sending/copying
it anyway. Fixing that complaint is my excuse, anyway, for why WL's NAQP
module behaves the way it does. Under the old rules, if you copied DC
then WL (silently) wrote MD in the Cabrillo and whoever it was that
complained was now happy.

Of course we now know that the NAQP rules got changed, and WriteLog's
namedmul.ini got updated on the web. MD and DC are now separate
multipliers, But not everyone downloaded the changed, ini file, and that
bit of code that converts a QTH to a "valid" one based on the ini file
now bites people that haven't upgraded. I am sorry about that.

I have a choice about how to "fix" this (noting that no fix will appear
in 12.19, which is near the end of its beta test.)
a) I can remove the code from the NAQP module that modifies the QTH
copied into one from the namedmul.ini file if there is an appropriate
entry in its [NAQP-Alias] section.
OR
b) document that folks that don't update using
Files/web-Update-data-files are going to get really bad results in NAQP
if the rules have changed.

Its not obvious to me that either fix is better than the other.

Wayne,  W5XD

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