[WriteLog] Some Observations during the RTTY RU

[Steve Holton]

Writelog behaved itself very well in the RU - never crashed or locked up 
but I did observe a few problems/features:

The biggest problem was found when hitting ESC to abort transmission (often 
because fumble fingers hit wrong Function key) and then hitting a function 
key (like the one I meant to hit in the first place). If I do that to 
quickly, the contents of the buffer associated with the function key is 
silently sent to the Type From Keyboard window. The Type From 
Keyboard  window doesn't appear, but if you open it you will find the 
message buffers from function key(s) you hit after escape sitting there.
If you then wait a bit and hit a function key it will send all the msg 
buffers that are in the Type From Keyboard window plus the function key you 
just hit.
If you do nothing none of the msgs sitting in the Type From Keyboard buffer 
are sent.
If you open the Type From Keyboard window with alt-K you see the messages 
but nothing is sent. If you then close the window with alt-K and reopen it 
with alt-K then the msgs are sent.
If you wait long enough between hitting ESC and the next function key all 
is well.
Took me a while to figure out what was happening especially as I took the 
"standard action" - if the function key doesn't work hit it again harder - 
which just makes the problem worse.

I noticed some anomalies in highlighting call signs.....
DE OK2BWB OK2BWB OK2BWB
Highlighted  K2B in all three instances as well as consistently during the 
rest of the QSO.
Same with:
DE VE3GLO VE3GLO VE3GLO
Came up with VE3GL highlighted.
These were in times of clear copy.
The second case might be a timing issue doing call analysis before all the 
characters had arrived from MMTTY, but it wouldn't seem to address the 
first case...
But as you see in my configuration below I do have a two processor system 
and that may expose some timing issues between the three processes running??

I tried to reproduce this post contest by going into "practice mode" typing 
into the Rttyrite window the above but it highlights them correctly i.e. 
the full call.

I asked WL to compute off times. It came up with three periods.
One was already in the "Enter These in the Log" box - this one was a 32 
minute period when I had 15 QSOs.
In the "Calculated" box were the two valid off periods.
If I ask the WT4I Cabrillo log checker to calculate the off times from the 
cabrillo output of the log it finds only the two valid off periods.

In the nice to have column - I would like to be able to save to a file the 
Rttyrite buffer. Not so much in some automatically as the contest 
progresses, but as an option in a File pulldown Save/Save as. The with a 
large buffer size one could save the whole test at the end or at 
"interesting" points during the test.

My Configuration is:
  WL 10.29E +MMTTY Plugin w/MMTTY
Win2K on Dual 450 MHz PII with 256M
FT1000MP Mk V
Soundcard utilizing Soundcard FSK to FT1000Mk V

73 Steve N1NB