CT VER 8.XX scoring

[Steve Harrison]

Ken, a hint (also to all other users of CT and WordPerfect). After doing 
WRITELOG, you can import *.ALL (or any other band log, for that matter) 
into WordPerfect 5.0 or 5.1 and set the font to Courier 12 point. This 
will automatically make the entire log come out correctly (except for 
some page breaks, which is because CT inserts automatic page breaks). 
Next, turn on page numbering (if you turn on page numbering BEFORE 
setting your desired font, the page numbers will be in the prior font! 
NOW you know why your page numbers never look right!).

In editing the log, you will find that you will probably have to edit the 
headers on each page (you can also set WP to do auto-replace of the 
headers) to remove such ridiculous things as Multi-Single (in FD???!!) and 
maybe the bands and modes (*.ALL is your allband log!). Otherwise, other 
editing will only be fixing typing mistakes when somebody typed the wrong 
thing, such as a section abbreviation that CT did not like or that is 
incorrect, like SD for San Diego instead of SDG. Obviously, since there 
are no multipliers in FD, you can do this in your word-processor's log 
without affecting your score!

You can then either call in another portion of your log such as the dupe 
sheets, or you can save and do dupe sheets separately. I prefer to create 
one big file with everything all together. Courier 12 also works well for 
dupe sheets, although CT obviously only creates 60-line pages; 
therfore, Courier 10 works OK for dupe sheets, too, and Courier 12 just 
leaves some extra space at the bottom of the page. On dupe sheets, you 
can delete the very first character on each page, which I believe is an 
ASCII character to switch your pin-head printer into and out of 
compressed-print; if you print using a laser printer, you won't need that 
character and can delete it (if you don't delete it, it will show up on 
the dupe sheet!). You will find another such character immediately in front 
of the first call on the dupe sheet, and can omit it for laser printing,
as well.

I have never succeeded in laser-printing the breakdown sheets correctly; 
all of the columns get skewed no matter what font I use. Since they 
aren't needed for log submissions, it doesn't matter anyway. The same 
goes for VHF QSO Party grid multipliers; the columns get skewed using a 
laser printer.

Finally, the summary sheet prints fine in either Courier 10 or 12. However,
the format of the CT summary sheet is nowhere near the required
"close-facsimile" of the ARRL's summary sheet, so why bother? If you don't
have a copy of the ARRL's summary, you can get it by FTPing to 
<oak.oakland.edu>, in the subdirectory /pub/hamradio/arrl/infoserver;
look for the file "FD.FRM" which is the FD summary sheet, and which includes
all of the bonus point categories.

I'm sure I've left out a couple of other editing things, but the above 
covers the basics. It will take you a number of hours to do a complete 
editing job, especially if you have several thousand QSOs and a lot of 
corrections to make in the log sheets. When you first pull in the log and 
after WP converts it to WP format, immediately save it to something so 
when you screw it up irretrievably the first couple of times, you can 
save a few minutes by throwing-away the messed-up log and retrieving the 
original. As you do your editing and before you do any major editing change,
save it again so you don't have to restart it from the beginning in the 
event of a catatrophe (for WP/DOS, this is done easily with F10).

Word for Windows sucks, and will NOT import non-Word files with columns such 
as log sheets without totally skewing the columns. This happens because 
Word uses some weird formula to automatically calculate character spacing 
based upon the width of the character. I always use full justification, 
which may be why the spacing gets screwed up. I haven't tried using only 
left-justification; that may avoid the column skewing, but I strongly 
doubt it. Don't even waste your time trying to use Word for logs. It may 
be that if CT wrote the logs using indent instead of blank spaces to 
separate columns, it would be possible to use Word easily. It may even be 
possible to do a "search-replace" to replace column spaces with indents.

If anybody else has problems using WP 5.0 or 5.1 (DOS only) for CT logs, 
I'll be happy to try to help. 73, Steve KO0U/4 <sharrison@sysplan.com>