[TRLog] Editing the log on the fly

[Jim Smith]

Just took a browse through the wish list on the TR site.  Every time I 
do this I learn something new.  (In this case the use of ALT I to 
increment the guy's serial number I've entered in the Exchange window 
each time he sends it while I'm waiting for him to notice me.)  Anyway I 
have a solution for item 2 on the list which doesn't require quitting 
and restarting TR.  I realize that many of you will find the solution 
abhorrent as it requires running TR under windows.

This assumes the log file already exists.

This works in Win98.  Don't know about any other versions of win.

Open the log file in a windows based text editor.
Switch to the TR DOS box and contest away.
When you want to edit a Q earlier than the last 5, switch to the text 
editor window, find the Q, (use CTRL-F) and edit it.
Switch back to TR.

You might want to try this when you aren't in the middle of a contest.

Some things that make this easier.

  If your keyboard has a "Windows" key, pressing it while TR is running 
will switch you instantly into windows.  (It will also display the Start 
menu.  Press the windows key again to get rid of it.  I have found that 
if I don't do this TR sometimes seems to freeze when I return to it. 
 Pressing the windows key twice gets everything going again.  Don't ask 
why.  I don't know.)  If the text editor has the focus you will be in 
the text editor and can make changes immediately.
  
  Use a text editor that knows if the file has been changed since you 
last did anything in the editor and asks if you want to reload the file. 
 Texturizer will do this (and a lot more - chuck notepad or whatever 
it's called these days and get something decent.) 
 http://www.texturizer.net/  

Hope this is useful to someone.

73 de Jim Smith    VE7FO

2. Editing QSOs beyond the last five: This is one of the prices paid for 
using an ASCII file. Unless I keep the file in memory and rewrite the 
whole file after every QSO (which would force me to use a binary file 
because you can write a binary file much faster), we are going to have 
to live with it. I still believe that this isn't something you should be 
doing very often - and you can still exit the program, make your changes 
and then restart. Perhaps I can reduce the cost of restarting by saving 
the band map somewhere.