[RTTY] WF1B Support

[Ekki Plicht]

Am Freitag, 6. September 2002 20:04 schrieb Joe Young:
> Does anyone know if support for the WF1B RTTY contest software
> will be available now that it is "freeware"? Is someone planning to
> keep it current, etc. I have looked (unsuccessfully) for this information
> on the WF1B web page. Thanks in advance for any help. 73 de Joe,

Hi Joe, 
I reply publicly to the reflector as this may interest others as well.

I plan to continue the support of WF1B/DOS. The problem is that Ray used some 
commercial libraries for the program, worth about US$400. Without these 
libraries it is impossible to compile the program.

After my first question here on this reflector, how strong the interest in a 
continued support of WF1B/DOS would be, I received quite a lot of mails, 
promising financial support. The point is that I don't want to ask for 
donations until I have something to show. So I will have to go ahead and buy 
the libraries, then publish the software and ask for donations to cover my 
expenses (abt US$400 as I said). Anything above my expenses will be funnelled 
back to the community, maybe by supporting contesting.com or other 
international projects, dxpeditions etc. I don't want to harvest where I 
didn't sow.

My plan is to have a "new" version ready for WAE contest in November, which 
seems to have changed rules in a fashion, that you couldn't use WF1B/DOS 
anymore.

Beyond that, I have to say that a purely DOS version of any program is lacking 
in future. My plan is to adopt the DOS version only to changed rules, but no 
functional enhancements will be made.

So the next step will be a version for Windows. The main goal is to maintain 
the ease of use and simplicity of WF1B which we became used to. I am well 
aware that there are some excellent contest programs out there (Writelog, 
RckRTTY. others). So maybe some additions in functionality are planned to 
stay competitive, mainly the support of the soundcard (with MMTTY); maybe 
some other enhancements I would like to see (SO2R support, bandmap, 
networking, dxcluster), without compromising the simplicity of the program.
This windows version is also planned as freeware, with donations welcome. 
These donations will only partly be returned to public.

So, that's the plan. Watch this space for further announcements.

73,
Ekki, DF4OR