Having just done a major cleanup of a log with around 55K QSOs, many of them imports from contest logs, I would like to revive the "Wish List" thread in hopes of influencing the development of future versions of DX4WIN. Specifically, there is room for major improvement in how DX4WIN handles data imports from downloaded LOTW reports.
About a year ago, I bit the bullet and decided to import all the 50K+ QSOs from my electronic contest logs, going back to 1989. When the import was complete, I uploaded the log (in several installments) to the LOTW server and was rewarded with around 4000 QSLs. I just did the import of the LOTW report ADIF files back into DX4WIN with the "Imported QSO sets Upload Flag" option set, and have continued to follow that procedure with succeeding updates ever since. This worked fine, and I have picked up lots of DXCC credits from this process. A couple of weeks ago, I happened to be scrolling through the logbook window and realized that the log file was terribly cluttered with large amounts of redundant information in the Notes for this QSO field. I decided to see if I could clean up a lot of this stuff. To my horror, I found in excess of 3000 records that needed to have this material expunged. What do I mean by redundant? If you look at what happens when the program imports a LOTW report, you'll understand. To give a near worst-case example, let's say I get a LOTW QSL for a QSO I made with my friend KU8E in the CQ WPX contest. Since the only exchange in WPX consists of a 599 and serial number, the original contest QSO record will have only the received serial number in the Received log field and the Notes for this QSO field will say "Freq=xx,xxxKHz, WPX CW YYYY". (This is the result of using AD1C's very nice ADIF2DXQ software -- thanks, Jim!). When I do the import of the LOTW record, assuming Jeff has provided all the possible information, the following will be appended to the text in the Notes for this QSO field: "LOTW: State=GA County=Harris Grid=EM72 CQZone<>5". What's redundant here? Practically everything! The "LOTW:" part isn't needed, since the record import sets the Upl Cnf flag. The 'State=GA County=Harris" aren't needed, since the record import populates the State and County fields. Similarly, the Grid field is also populated, so the "Grid=EM72" isn't needed. The "CQZone<>5" part IS useful information, given that the initial import of the contest QSO caused DX4WIN to populate the Zone field with a 4 based on the "8" in the call. Unfortunately, DX4WIN does NOT update the Zone from the imported data. This may not be all bad, since there are a good many LOTW users who mistakenly enter their IARU zone in the CQ zone box when they upload their log files and thus provide the wrong zone in their QSL record. The details of the log changes are really good to have, but they certainly don't belong in the Notes for this QSO field. This information should instead be placed in a transaction log that is generated (or appended to) by the import process. Some sort of indicator in the log that there is updated data that conflicts with previously logged information is a good idea, but this would be much less intrusive than filling the log file with what amounts to a transaction log of the import process. By the way, manually editing thousands of records in the log to get rid of the spurious text was simply too overwhelming to contemplate, as the program provides no tools to manipulate the notes field. What I ended up doing was to export the log in chunks as a .dxq file (choose File > Import/Export from the main window, and then select DX4WIN6 format > File > Export in the Import/Export Filters window) and use WordPad to edit the .dxq file. Editing the .dxq file with WordPad is still a major pain, since the text following the "LOTW:" in each record is unique and you can't just do a search and replace to remove the unwanted text. But it does go much, much faster working with the text file to select and delete the spurious content from each record. After fixing the .dxq file, I then re-imported it into the original log file and let the imported dupes replace the existing records. I broke the project into manageable chunks and finally got all the log entries fixed. It was a monumental job. You can bet I'll stay on top of it in the future. Lest this sound like too much like whining, I want to be clear that I'm still extremely pleased with the comprehensive capabilities of DX4WIN. It does a great job of keeping track of award status and gives the user unparalleled flexibility in handling log data. But like any software, there's always room for improvement. In my book fixing the LOTW import process would be a great leap forward. 73... Randy, W8FN ______________________________________________________________ Dx4win mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/dx4win Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Dx4win@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
