[CQ-Contest] A Plea to Cabrillo Contet Robot Writers

[Doug Smith W9WI]

On Tue, 2007-01-09 at 09:29, Mike wrote:
> I believe the best solution would be either ADIF or XML. A plus for ADIF 
> is that the fields are already defined.
> XML tags would have to be defined, and agreed on. It would be marginally 
> easier to parse.

Cabrillo is MUCH easier to parse than either ADIF or XML.  Especially
for Novice programmers -- and for those trying to read the files without
a computer.  (seriously, you can print a Cabrillo file & the printout
will make sense.  You can't say that for a printout of an ADIF or XML
file.)  

A Cabrillo file can be easily loaded into a spreadsheet for further
analysis.  You can't do that with ADIF or XML.  (I suppose you *can*,
but it's MUCH, MUCH, MUCH harder)  

Some tweaking of Cabrillo may (or may not) be justified, but IMHO
switching to XML or ADIF would be a very bad idea.  
-- 
Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View (Nashville), TN  EM66
http://www.w9wi.com