[WT-support] Win-Test 2.20.0 is out!

[Simon Pearson]

On Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 07:47 -0500, Pete Smith wrote:
> The important thing to me is that Win-Test and the other loggers
> should all be able to talk readily to common scoreboards.  For
> example, if contesting.com chose to implement a scoreboard for major
> contests, they ought to be able to write it to use data in only one
> format, regardless of which program it comes from.

Absolutely, and that's one good thing XML tries to accomplish; having
various data represented in a common format so regardless of application
the data can be displayed. 

I do definitely feel the xml4results idea is a good one. Some say that
being able to see competitors scores would take some of the fun out of
contesting (it takes the fun out of not knowing how competitors are
doing which is often a motivator); however, I tend to think the opposite
in the sense that it can be a good motivator to know how your
competitors are doing. At the end of the day, it's operator choice as to
whether or not they look at how the competition is doing ;)

We ran a system at G6PZ in CQWW SSB with another multi-single station in
G-land (G5W) so we could keep track of how they were doing (and vice
versa) and at times when we were lagging behind it sparked a number of
interesting strategic discussions! ;)

> I had missed Fabian's post to the xml4results list - that is great
> news.

Having spoken to Fabian about his app, it worked by monitoring QSO data
transmitted in the UDP frames and scoring itself (against a local copy
of cty.dat etc). The only disadvantage of this setup is that if the
scoring app went offline for any period of time whilst QSOs were still
logged, the score represented would be inaccurate (also if the cty.dat's
didn't match for whatever reason the score could differ slightly). 

As a result, Fabian did suggest that score information be transmitted in
the UDP frames and as usual, hats off, the Win-Test developers went
ahead and implemented it. :) 
 
> During the current test, N1MM Logger users are in fact using an
> outboard application to grab the data from their database, format and
> transmit it to WA7BNM's scoreboard test page.  Integration into
> logging software, from the user's perspective, will just make it
> easier to get lots of users on board.  That's my interest -- I have no
> technical qualifications, just want to see it done in a way that best
> helps popularize contesting.

I agree; implementation into the logging software is *the* ideal. It
requires no further work on the operator's part, which is of utmost
importance. I'm sure such a system will be implemented into Win-Test. 

In the meantime, however, I anticipate Fabian will update his Perl app
to reflect the new way WT transmits its score info via UDP frames :) 

Cheers,

-- 
Simon Pearson M0CLW
WWYC #452 | G6PZ CG