[CQ-Contest] Cabrillo - Who's in Charge?

[Tony Field]

The Cabrillo format is certain going to present a problem while it "becomes"
standard.

Paul's comments about the NON-STANDARD use by CQWW are the most distressing.
The existing standard phrases should be adopted by all contests that support
the Cabrillo format and should not, under any circumstances, be changed
(however can be added to)

The example

>    CQ          CONTEST: CQWW
>    CABRILLO    CONTEST: CQ-WW-SSB  (or CQ-WW-CW)

is a good illustration.  CQWW should use the existing "CQ-WW-SSB" type of
format.  If the program CQWW uses to decode the Cabrillo format does not
figure things out correctly based on the standard, the program should be
fixed.

It would also be reasonable within the standard to allow an addition.  For
example, if by some magic, CQWW created a new PSK31 contest, it would be
reasonable to ADD an new category such as "CQ-WW-PSK31".  This would be
consistent with the Cabrillo standard and should be trivial for developers
like Paul to add the new mode.

In a similar vein,

>   CQ          POWER:
>   CABRILLO    No Power Header (it's included in the CATEGORY: header)

is an UNNECESSARY addition to the Cabrillo standard and MUST be avoided.

Paul also illustrated the following additions to the keyword contents.

> I'm concerned because I write contest logging
> software, and my users want to know whether or not
> it supports Cabrillo. It's difficult to support a
> standard that's ambiguous or incomplete.

>    CQ          TOTAL QSOS:
>    CQ          TOTAL ZONES:
>    CQ          TOTAL COUNTRIES:
>    CQ          MAILING LABEL:
>    CQ          EMAIL ADDRESS:

It seems to me that this is somewhat consistent with the Cabrillo standard.
I suspect that the original selection of key words terminated by a colon is
to allow exactly this kind of extensibility.  Any contest analyzing program
should select only those key-word headers that it requires and simply ignore
any key-word that is not needed. In the above example, the "TOTAL QSOS:",
"MAILING LABEL:", and "EMAIL ADDRESS:" are quite reasonable.  Thus a
programmer like Paul could ensure that all such headers are generated and
not have to worry about which ones are applicable to a specific contest.  Of
course, there is the possibility of unnecessary header proliferation.

However, adding summary sheet data to the header is inconsistent with the
stated goals of Cabrillo since the objective is to have the analyzing
program used by CQWW recompute any summary information needed.  If CQWW's
analysis program does not do this, it is BROKEN by Cabrillo standards and
needs to be fixed.

tony field
field at nucleus.com
ve6yp at rac.ca
http://www.nucleus.com/~field



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