>>>AA6YQ comments below
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]on Behalf Of Neal Campbell
Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 11:21 AM
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Dxbase] Import/Export Issues
Thanks for raising the adif issue and I can promise it will get a thorough
review for 2010.
For something that sounds like it should be straightforward, ADIF is not so
easy to deal with. First of all, there are 2+ versions (I say plus because
the draft 3 of ADIF is pretty well advanced). So if your import program
supports a version than your export version, you can expect trouble.
>>>The current version of ADIF is 2.2.3. All changes made to ADIF are upward
compatible. Thus a file exported by an application that supports ADIF 1.0
can be imported by an application that supports ADIF 2.2.3 with no loss of
information. An application that supports ADIF 1.0 can import a file
exported by an application that supports 2.2.3 and accurately recover
information from all fields defined in ADIF 1.0.
>>>The sorts of things that have been added to ADIF since ADIF 1.0 include
- the ability to convey the equivalent of states/provinces and counties for
countries beyond the US and Canada (e.g. Russian Distrikts and Oblasts,
Japanese Prefectures and Cites/Guns, etc.)
- the ability to convey LotW and eQSL confirmation status
- additional DXCC entities, modes and satellites
- a standard way for logging applications to define proprietary fields, so
that two applications don't use the same field name to mean different things
- the ability to convey award submission and grant information, so LotW,
eQSL, RSGB, DARC etc. can accept and report award information electronically
>>>There is no ADIF 3. For the past several years, a few developers have
been advocating a transition to XML, and have outlined a proposal they call
XDIF. So far, there's been little progress and no adoption. See
www.xdif.org.
The second problem is that the ADIF standard is increasingly being developed
in isolation. In talking with several of the other software authors, it
seems that it is a standard driven by an incredinly small group (often one
[person ) and comments from other software writers don't seem to affect the
ultimate outcome, so many of them have "given up".
>>>All changes to ADIF are approved by vote, with 1 vote per participating
application. There are generally 10-12 participants in each vote, including
representatives of LotW, eQSL, Ham Radio Deluxe, LuxLog, DX4WIN, Logger32,
and DXLab. You are more than welcome to participate.
So you end up with a list of a zillion modes being defined, etc., stuff that
we could not actually give you the option of selecting in a program because
the list would be so large its unfeasible.
>>>ADIF 2.2.3 defines 59 modes, not "a zillion". There has been an explosion
of soundcard modes developed over the past several years. Users want to log
QSOs in these modes and be able to upload them to LotW and/or eQSL for
confirmation.
I think we all support the idea behind ADIF and try to implement the parts
that make sense to each of us. Jim, ADIF, has written a utility that tries
to take the standard and translate it into what DX4WIN understands. Since
DXBase uses its own adif import program, it simplifies the process for me
because I can support the import of the zillion modes, etc. without having
to make them available in the user interface. I can also make sure that the
export is compliant without giving every option done in the "standard".
>>>"ADIF compliance" has never meant supporting every capability that ADIF
can convey. It means
- when importing an ADIF file, accurately extracting the subset of
information that is relevant to the application
- when exporting an ADIF, including information defined by ADIF in the
specified way, so that it can be recovered when imported by another
ADIF-compliant application (e.g. if you're going to export each QSO's CQ
zone, put it in the CQZ tag, not by inventing a CQ_ZONE tag that no other
application recognizes)
>>>If you want to limit your Mode selector to SSB, CW, and RTTY, that's your
decision, and in no way compromises ADIF compliance.
73,
Dave, AA6YQ
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