[TRLog] Handling of "?" at end of call sign

[Tim Totten, N4GN]

Here's another small addition to the wish list.  Hope I haven't hit my
lifetime limit yet!  :-)

Actually, this is such a minor annoyance it might be more trouble to
explain than it's worth.  But I'm hoping Tree can understand it, and it
turns out the solution is as simple as I think it might be.  If it's a
complicated fix, it's definitely not worth Tree's time . . .

This applies only when running stns on CW.  Perhaps it's a bad habit, but
there are many times in a contest when I'm running guys and I'm not
certain of the call, so I'll send something like "JA1ABC? 5NN KY" (or
whatever the exchange is).  By doing this, I clue the other guy in that
I'm not certain of his call.  Believe it or not, a lot of guys can't
really copy even their own call at contest speeds, so if I send "JA1ABC
5NN KY" but the station's real call is JA1ADC, he might not correct me,
and I end up with a busted call in the log.  I have lots of examples of
this on tape, mostly in DXpedition pileups, but I know it also happens in
contests.

Anyway, good or bad, I sometimes type a complete call followed by the
question mark "?" in the call sign field as I'm running.  Here are some
scenarios.  These all presume I have set CALL OK NOW CW MESSAGE = } OK.
(The "}" is supposed to send only the prefix or suffix of a corrected
call.)

Scenario 1:

 Me:  (typing "JA1ABC?" in the call field) JA1ABC? 5NN KY
Him:  DE JA1ADC TU 5NN 123 (I busted his suffix)
 Me:  (fixing the call and hitting Enter) ADC OK TU N4GN

In this case, TR Log does exactly what I want.

Scenario 2:

 Me:  (typing "JA1ABC?" in the call field) JA1ABC? 5NN KY
Him:  DE JR1ABC TU 5NN 123 (I busted his prefix)
 Me:  (fixing the call and hitting Enter) JR1ABC OK TU N4GN

Here, I would have preferred TR Log to send "JR1 OK TU N4GN", since I
really only corrected the prefix.  But since I also deleted the "?" from
the end of the call, TR Log thinks I also "corrected" the suffix, so it
sends the full call.  Not a major issue, just a minor annoyance.

Scenario 3:

 Me:  (typing "JA1ABC?" in the call field) JA1ABC? 5NN KY
Him:  R TU 5NN 123 (I got the call right)
 Me:  (deleting the "?" from the end of the call and hitting Enter) ABC OK
TU N4GN

Here, TR Log also thinks I corrected the suffix, since I deleted the "?",
so it sends the suffix agn.  I would prefer that TR Log treat this just as
if I typed the call correctly (without the "?" at the end), and send the
normal QSL MESSAGE ("TU N4GN").  This is slightly more annoying than
scenario 2, but still not too bad.

Scenario 4:

 Me:  (typing "J?1ABC?" in the call field) J?1ABC? 5NN KY  (I'm not sure
if it's JA1 or JR1)
Him:  DE JR1ABC TU 5NN 123
 Me:  (fixing the call and hitting Enter) JR1ABC OK TU N4GN

Again, I'd prefer TR Log to send "JR1 OK TU N4GN", but this isn't too
annoying.

I think the simple way to make all four scenarios work the way I'd like is
if any "?" AT THE END of the "call I came back to" variable would simply
be stripped off before testing the "call I'm trying to log" to the "call I
came back to".  This should still make things work the way they currently
do for scenarios where you'd change "JA1AB?" to "JA1ABC".

Related to all this, and perhaps more annoying than any of the four
scenarios above, putting a "?" at the end of a full call makes the
"possible call" feature worthless.  If I come back to "JA1ABC?", TR Log
isn't going to show me any "U+1" possible calls unless I have something
really screwed up in TRMASTER.DTA, like "JA1ABCD".  Again, it would be
nice here if TR Log simply stripped the trailing "?" before checking for
possible calls.  Or to be more accurate, I guess it would have to do a U+1
analysis for both cases--where the "?" is treated as a wildcard for
the last letter, and where it is simply stripped before the call is
tested.  That would cover the ambiguity of a case like "JA1AB?", where it
would be nice to have U+1 calls presented for "JA1AB" as well as "JA1AB?".

Did anyone actually follow this?

73,

Tim Totten, n4gn@n4gn.com
http://www.n4gn.com


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