[UK-CONTEST] Contest logger comparisons

[Andrew]

On 18/06/11 20:31, Clive Whelan wrote:
> Everyone has their favourite loggers, and I am no exception. I have at
> one time or another held subscripitions to all the major loggers, with
> the exception of CT which I thought was quite unsuitable for  a CW
> operator, chiefly because I could never find a way to send leading
> zeroes in serial numbers.

Clive, this can be done by using the -LZ switch on the command line when 
starting up CW.  From the CT manual "-LZ  Leading Zeros — Add leading 
zeros to serial numbers below 100. For example, 7 becomes 007, and 34 
becomes 034. The CWAbbrev command will turn all zeros into Ts. There is 
no way to have CT send QSO number 10 as T10."

> However, I am concerned because whilst Writelog and Wintest are written
> in C++, N1MM is coded in Visual Basic. Despite what some geeks may tell
> you this is not an issue for the end user and is quite transparent.
> However, for the future it may well be of concern, becaue VB will not be
> supported for ever by M$ , and at some point will be rendered useless in
> the same way as TR was, when Tree was unable to port the prog. from
> Pascal to a more modern Windows supported language.

I was speaking to KD4D yesterday at the W3LPL open house (who has 
written the apps we use at W3LPL to combine RBN spots with local skimmer 
spots and filter them before presenting them to the logging software) 
and he was saying the problem with N1MM is that it uses a Microsoft 
Access database, which just can't cope with a continuous stream of 10 
skimmer spots per second hitting it.  Not sure if it can't write fast 
enough to the database or if the >1million spots in 48hrs is too much 
for it.  Ironically, the old DOS based CT, which W3LPL still uses, has 
no problem with the high spot volume.  Apparently, the module in N1MM is 
being rewritten (or has been already?) to work better with a high spot 
volume.

> I hope this point is
> not reached too soon, but it is surely a matter of when and not if. One
> can only hope that Wintest will eliminate the idiosyncratic " features "
> discussed and also ditch the jaded CT style interface.

I actually like the CT interface.  All the important information is 
there and all the extra features can be accessed with either a simple 
keyboard shortcut or a short command in the logging field.  Once these 
shortcuts/commands are memorised, I find it much more convenient than 
trying to find an option buried in one of the menus of, eg N1MM.  Maybe 
I'm a luddite in this respect, or maybe it's because I still use the 
command line a lot in linux :)

> There is another faint possibility, and that is a version of TR ported
> to the Linux platform by Martin/OK1RR and friends. It is indeed only the
> non availability of a good Linux contest logger that keeps me using the
> execrable Windows platform.

I was never a fan of TR (too confusing when tired) but it would be nice 
if someone could port something like CT or Wintest over to linux for 
those of us who are very familiar with the CT-like interface!!

Vy 73,

Andrew AC6WI / GI0NWG