[WriteLog] "its broken"

[Ford Peterson]

Robin wrote:

> I've had no problem with Writelog networking. BUT...  (This is a BIG "BUT"
> here),  I've never mixed OS's and I avoid XP home.  At the office (where we
> officially support 1000 PC and unofficially many more) we will not; I
> repeat WILL NOT help anyone who shows up with XP home.  We always tell them
> to back down to Win 2K or upgrade to XP pro.
> 
> Just my opinion.  You mileage may vary.
> 
> http://home.rockymountnc.com/~rdkeller/
> Robin D. Keller

I'm not so sure it is the network aspect.  I am coming to believe that there are hooks that can be placed into the INI file that make things sing.  Unfortunately, nobody has bothered to explain the INI file to anybody.  Apparently, there is a INI entry that will indicate where the files should be saved.  Find THAT in the DOCs and you win a cigar.

People that are using WL in a stable environment, where software gets loaded and it runs for years of upgrades and the like, people seem to be having good luck.  If you need to load it on a clean machine from a fresh install and you will find what I experienced.

In addition, taking a blank copy of WLFULL and installing it, you have a LOT of reconfiguring to do.  Why the author has chosen to leave this up to the customer is beyond me.  If this was free software, I'd understand it.  I've been giving Wayne my $30/year whether I need it or not, in anticipation of continued development.  

In addition to needing to reconfigure WL from the defaults, there is the constant reconfiguring of contest defaults.  Why, for example, is it necessary to go into the entry format screen and put a check mark in the "no space" property for the "C" field?  I don't know ANYBODY that fails to use the space bar to navigate from field to field.  Yet EVERY contest defaults to space OK on the C field, which prevents the cursor from wrapping back to the beginning.  Why do I need to deal with this for EVERY contest?  And then for every machine using that network?  This is stupid!

We needed to set up 4 machines from scratch.  Several of us worked for many hours on more than one night prior to the contest in an attempt to configure all the screens to look decent and behave correctly.  Way too much of the information needed to configure this software comes from the web pages of monetarily disinterested parties.  Scour the pages for otherwise undocumented INI entries, incorporate changes, and test.  Then, guess what?  During our testing we entered bogus callsigns in practice sessions during which we tested the database, the configurations, wave files, etc.  We get to the day of the contest and have to "start a new file" from the main screen.  HUGE MISTAKE!  Then you get to start from scratch and reconfigure everything again!  Try that with 4 or 5 PCs, with helpers of various and sundry experience levels, with only 12-15 minutes to the starting gun!  It's busted I tell you.  The anti-christ of software.  Nothing that cannot be fixed without the author paying some attention to details, coding it efficiently, documenting it completely, and then testing it.

Wayne wants specifics.  Well, here are some more specifics from experience.  I have yet to receive any acknowledgement that anybody is even monitoring this thread.  If they don't care about it, why should I?  Why?  Because it can be made to work well with attention.  Or do as one respondant suggested, open up the code to the community and let US fix it.

Ford-N0FP
ford at cmgate.com