[RTTY] Re: Contest Happenings??

[Kok Chen]

On Jan 26, 2005, at 6:58 AM, Bill Turner wrote:
> If I understand you correctly, the %X macro would REPEAT my report
> back to me?

The %X macro in cocoaModem is simply a macro which fetches the received 
exchange field.  How it is (ab)used by the operator, including placing 
it in a transmitted string, is up to them.

If the received exchange is "CA," %X will be the substitution string 
"CA" without the RST (in cocoaModem, RST or PSB for most contest 
templates is in a separate and 599-defaulted field that you usually 
don't have to touch, but one that can be edited before being entered in 
the log, in case the guy at the other end sends you a 549).

You will not see %X in the standard contest templates which I provide 
for exchanges, since I have myself never echoed back any part of the 
received exchange in the few years that I have engaged in contests.  
But people make a hobby of overriding the macro templates that I 
provide.

With cocoaModem, I leave it up to Darwin to take care of those who do 
not leave well enough (i.e., what I provide, of course, HI) alone.  And 
if Darwin is too slow moving, I take features away when I see them 
misused (no joke, I have already done that a couple of times).

In cocoaModem, %X has a companion %x, which is the sent exchange macro. 
  I have maintained this kind of symmetry (a mad man's mind works in 
mysterious ways) in a couple of other places.  %C is the other person's 
call sign and %c is your own call sign, for example.

Even though there is a 4-digit macro for UTC time for use in contest 
exchanges that need them, the one thing that I have utterly refused to 
implement is a string macro which has the current date and time in its 
full glory.  It only encourages the LIDs.  Let them type it in if they 
feel that strongly about announcing to the world the date and time at 
which they have entered the QSO into the log.

73
Chen, W7AY