[RTTY] Length-of-Exchange utility

[David Westbrook]

Here's a little web utility to compare different exchanges such as "599 0123
0123" vs "599-0123-0123"  and display the real (including shifts) length and
the real time (in seconds) it would take to transmit.  Assumes 45.5 baud,
and has the stop bits and Un-Shift-On-Space (USOS) as options.

        http://dwestbrook.net/projects/ham/rtty-length

What sparked this was Chen's comment in the recent "RTTY" thread re: AL9A's
"slow" rtty:
~~~~~~~~~~
"'Someone' in the contesting community should whip up a Java tool to
figure out the number of seconds an exchange takes when you enter the
actual exchange and states such as number of stop bits and USOS
condition. Perhaps such a tool should even be embedded into RTTY contest
programs. Most RTTY ops know how to count them, but it could be an eye
opener for folks who are not familiar with stop bits and LTRS/FIGS shifts.
 Often, it is not a matter of choosing a shorter exchange for the human
reader, but on how you create the exchange for a machine."
~~~~~~~~~~

So, enjoy!

Comments/Issues/Suggestions welcome here or directly at dwestbrook at gmail.com
Source code (perl using a regexp approach) is free and linked to from the
tool.

Chen -- thanks again for the tech support!!

--david
KJ4IZW