[Trlog] Who Will Kill TRlog?

[Rick Tavan]

It's true, tr is dying. After all these years, it may not be possible to 
plug all the holes so it will run reliably in everyone's DOS windows or 
on machines manufactured after 1995. It is inevitable. It happens to old 
software. I, too, hope that someone comes up with a nice wrapper and 
simple set of guidelines that extend the life of tr, but even so, 
eventually it will become the tool of only a few of us die-hards.

I'm actually a relative tr newbie, having switched to it in order to log 
the Sprint just a few years ago, just before a few other programs 
figured it out. I've been delighted by its flexibility and appalled by 
its complexity and environmental sensitivity. For the last NCCC meeting, 
W0YK organized a logging software shootout with advocates for each major 
program describing, defending and proselytizing for their favored 
program. He couldn't find a good advocate for tr even though we thought 
it was the most widely used. I finally agreed to speak on the subject, 
given some expert assistance from friends who know the program much 
better than I ever will. I described it as "the logging program everyone 
loves to hate." My bottom line is that if you can make it run and keep 
it running and tune it deftly for each event, then it will increase your 
score more than any other package. If you don't use it right, however, 
it will send you blithering off to the insane asylum. And this becomes 
more true every year for more contesters.

Our friend will die. As soon as one of the Windows programs gets to 
about 60% of tr's feature set, the end will come quickly. Which one will 
it be? Writelog, N1MM, miLog? The race has already begun. The betting 
window is still open.

/Rick N6XI