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

[Doug Smith W9WI]

On Wed, 2007-01-10 at 10:08, VE5ZX wrote:
> I have parsed and visually inspect many XML files. They are just as easy to 
> visually read as Cabrillo - perhaps even simpler because the physical 
> location of characters in a field is usually of little concern. Have a look 
> at any XML file in a browser and you can see how simple it is to read.

I would respectfully disagree...

Now, I'm not saying XML is necessarily *hard* to parse visually.  It
could, after all, be a termcap file<grin>!  

It would seem to me a consistent location of the characters in a field
is an *advantage* for human readers.  Maybe not for a file with a small
number of records, but when there are 500 Q's in my log I don't need
<CALL_WORKED>W1AW</CALL_WORKED) to know the 7th column contains the call
of the station I worked.  We know the "rules" - the XML tags are clutter
that really doesn't impart any knowledge to the human reader.  

They are of course necessary for a computer to parse the file.  Cabrillo
accomplishes this through the template.

XML ignores physical newlines.  A single QSO could occupy a single
line.  Or there could be a separate line for each element.  Or you could
put the entire contest on a single line, with only the </QSO> (or
whatever) tag to indicate where one QSO ends and the next begins.  This
means that things like 

DO
	INPUT #1,X$
UNTIL EOF(1)

or the Perl WHILE(<>) construct 

don't work.  XML likewise doesn't allow things like
$callsign=substr($qso,17,8); .  If your language has an XML parser - and
you understand how to use it - that may not be such a big deal.  Not all
languages have a parser.
 
> Opening an XML file in Excel 2003 is very simple. Just select the file and 
> open it. Excel will give you some choices as to how you want the file opened 
> for inspection and manipulation. The same cannot be said for ADIF or 
> Cabrillo. 

Cabrillo can be opened as a CSV text file.  Specify fixed-width and
click where you want the columns separated.  

I seem to recall ADIF is very similar to XML in most respects - might it
even *be* XML?  I faced a rather complicated project trying to import a
huge block of ADIF data from my old logging program, mainly because of
ADIF's casual treatment of newlines.
-- 
Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View (Nashville), TN  EM66
http://www.w9wi.com