On 11/5/18 2:32 AM, Werner Koch wrote:
Hello!
Hello Werner,
As the maintainer of the Xlog software, I'd like to thank you for your
enthusiasm and willingness to share your ideas and code with the community.
Now that my transceiver sits close to my monitor I started to make real
use of xlog. It is a nice and small Unix program and should be
sufficient for me. However, there are a couple of peculiarities: For
example on Saturday I did some contest QSOs and got one dup response
("we already had a QSO"). The worked before windows showed that QSO but
I didn't realized that fast enough. So a better indication is needed to
make such things obvious. I did some patches:
1. Change the color of a new callsign when it has been worked.
The color is changed on an exact match. It would be better to also
indicate a fuzzy match here. The whole thing is pretty important to
quickly check whether a station has already been worked; for example
in a contest.
Using a fixed color is a bit crude but it is a first step for an
improved answer-back during data entry.
The above seems like it would be a relatively simple, but useful addition.
2. Just one button to set date and UTC to the current time.
It does not make sense to be able to set the current time but keep
the existing date. Better one button for this. Note that the date
can anyway be edited manually to any value.
I'm curious...did you remove a button from the GUI? Do you have a
screenshot?
3. Change the order of fields in the QSO frame
Except when typing in old log paper entries or similar, there is no
reason that the order must follow the order in the log windows.
From a usage point of view the new order seems to be better. For
example the band and mode is rarely changed and should thus not get
into the way when logging a new QSO. The call and the RSTs should
be the first and easiest to enter data. Actually the UTC should
even come after the call but I didn't do that because another patch
should fill in the UTC at save-time - this is a better for contests.
I have a friend who has wished for a) a better/different order in the
New QSO frame, or b) the ability to add/delete those boxes at will, for
different contests, and c) the ability to enter a QSO *without* needing
the mouse. My friend's chief complaint is that tabbing over unused info
boxes is error prone and should be unnecessary. Toward that end, I'm
curious about your changes.
For example, in a 6m contest, the exchange might be callsign, signal
report, and grid locator, which is challenging to do with the current
software.
as well as a few supporting changes. My goal is to make xlog ready for
real contest use up to a level that it can compete with whatever the
other hams in my club are using on Windows. I also looked at fldigi,
which is a great set of tools, but given that I am more a C and Gtk+ guy
I decided to give xlog a try.
Given that I basically lost all my CVS knowledge, I took the Savannah
xlog2 repo and imported it into a new Git repository for my local work.
You can find it at
git://git.gnupg.org/people/wk/xlog.git
Now the question is whether you like my changes at all and, if so, how
shall I send you the patches?
I would also like to discuss possible new features here to see whether
my patches make sense for a wider community. The next feature I am
looking into is an automatic RST+nnn counter and faster and more safe
contest logging options.
I am interested in your ideas. I'd like to find a way to maintain a
balance between the casual users of Xlog and those who would like the
tool to be more user friendly for contest logging.
Thanks for sharing!
73,
Andy
Xlog Maintainer
--
Andy Stewart (KB1OIQ)
Founder: Worcester Linux Users' Group
Founder: Chelmsford Linux Meetup Group
President: PART of Westford, MA (WB1GOF)
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