[WT-support] After CQWW CW

[Tõnno Vähk]

Thank you very much Larry for taking the time to comment!

My comments/answers by numbers:

1. AUTOSEND is a great tool that already works very well. I look forward to Olivier's comments to those issues.

2. Thanks and I still see a lot of CTRL-... combinations free for shortcuts.

4. "Honestly, I don't see the difference between a cluster spot and an op-entered spot regarding its lifetime ? Can you elaborate please ?"

Well, with cluster you cannot increase the lifetime of the spots to more than 20-30 min as you will be overflooded with them. In SO2R you can S&P through the band and record all the maybe ca 30 stations and you are happy to have them in the bandmap for more than one hour as when you return for next S&P round many of the beacon single band stations are still sitting on the same frequencies and you don't have to wait for their calls again or at least you don't have to type the call in again. If your bandmap is not overcrowded it is always good to have rather more than less stations in there.

6. As a quick solution to lacking messages problem maybe just a few shortcuts as I described to Additional messages. For example from CTRL F4 to CTRL F8 - those are free! I hope adding shortcuts would not break the code or have unwanted side effects?

13. I mean CTRL-F9, where Copy as Text from Continents sheet gives you only precentages. Absolute QSO numbers would be nice. Ohterwise statistics is small issue of course.

73
Tonno
ES5TV

-----Original Message-----
From: support-bounces at win-test.com [mailto:support-bounces at win-test.com] On Behalf Of Laurent HAAS - F6FVY
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 9:38 PM
To: support at win-test.com
Subject: Re: [WT-support] After CQWW CW

Hi Tonno

Tõnno Vähk a écrit :

> It is strange that for some reason I don't seem to get very much 
> reaction to my emails:)

Be assured we read every mail posted to this list.

We have work for decades now...

We choose what to implement on the available time, the taken risk to break working code, the most useful (in terms of score) features, etc... 
Every op has his own ideas. We try to do our best to offer a tool for most of the users.

> 1. AUTO SENDING issues.

The AutoSend *itself* is an issue ;-)

I let Olivier answer on this, as he has been convinced to implement it ;-)

> 2. AUTOCQ also needs shortcut badly. I know text commands RPT and NORPT but those are not for serious contester. I would recommend CTRL-C (I guess the same as TR uses and very logical and well positioned). It should not be difficult to introduce but would be very useful!

Noted. Shortcuts become a rare resource... We have to carefully choose how to spend them.

> 3. Option to fill the callsign field automatically when tuning on station in the bandmap. It is not easy to follow the bandmap and see what spot turns yellow and in many cases you do double job and copy the call although it is in the bandmap. We have discussed this but I don't remember if it was possible. Please comment. Would be very useful in SO2R when you go through the same band again and again and copy the same stations.

Not sure it could be implmented without implementing the S&P vs RUN operating mode. It thus requires much work to avoid any unwanted side effects.

> 4. Maximum Spots Life Time in Bandmap is 60 minutes. Please increase this. Not everybody is using cluster:) In SO2R you want to have the stations there longer.

Honestly, I don't see the difference between a cluster spot and an op-entered spot regarding its lifetime ? Can you elaborate please ?

> 5. Tail end feature. PTT would stay on after sending TU and you can enter call and push Insert right away without dropping PTT. It could be just some command ($KEY) to activate ALT-K or keyboard mode in the message and Insert would stop it. The same command could be used in messages to send endings like frequencies etc. In TR the PTT drops right after the buffer is empty (all the entered signs have been transmitted).
> 
> 6. Shortcuts to additional messages or new messages. It is not really possible efficiently to operate the ALT-C to get Additional Messages. I propose to create shortcuts for Additional messages. CTRL-F1 to CTRL-F12 are free exept F1, F2, F3, F9 - those could be repositioned or let's use only the free ones! Another option would be to move F8 to F12 keys somewhere else and create 5 more messages there!? Do we really need to have F8-F10 and F11 used for activating windows, how many times do you do it during the contest?? Please consider maybe reallocating at least F8-F10 and create 3 more messages. Is it possible?
>
> 7. Can you introduce $NRPLUS1 and $NRMINUS1 (for example) commands? Those could be put in the message and would be very helpful in M/S for example to send previous or next serial number.

All this would require to break the CT compatibility and thus it needs to offer different keys assignments (as an option of course). I'm always puzzled by people who need so many messages... Much work and guaranteed side effects  ;-)  but we have it in our minds...

> 8. Why EXCHANGE FREQUENCY WITH command is greyed out now although two computers are networked? Can you enable it and create shortcut for it like we had in WRTC? Now I guess CTRL-S shortcut is used to swap frequency of two radios not between stations so the shortcut could be CTRL-F! 

=> Olivier

> 9.Bandmap does not remember the Bandmap vs List setting - that might be written into settings (ini?) file as well? Usually you want to have List setting but it always defaults to Bandmap.

Noted.

> 10. Can the CW messages by added to INI file? Now it is very cumbersome to rewrite them for every contest again as they are always at default values. Would be nice to have them fixed. Takes a lot of time to open some old log and try to recall how those were set, then open new log again and set the messages.

It is much more complicated than what you expressed because the messages are not the same for all contests ! It would then require to save them separately. We also need to integrate the SO2R advanced scenarios. 
Finally, as we also think abt roaming profiles, all these aspects must be considered together before writing any line of code on this topic.

> 11. When you enter callsign to callsign window the program shows 0 points till you enter the QSO. This was reported already and would be nice to have fixed to see the potential points immidiately when entering callsign.

Noted (even if I'm a bit skeptical on its usefullness).

> 12. With new WT versions WT starts minimized. To be more exact the last active window before the start of WT stays on top. It is a bit strange, don't you find? It should be the active window after start?

Never noticed this... Anyone else ?

> 13. Statistics. I would like to have continents distribution by the number of QSOs not in precentage terms. All the other data is in QSO numbers. Maybe just another option to choose?

Do you mean the available data in the Alt-R wnd, or in the Ctrl-F9 wnd ?

> Would be also nice to get some more info out like best 60 min, 10 min, 1 min rate, stations worked on 6 bands, 5 bands.. Number of QSOs made by each Radio and by each Station in the network.

Abt the post-contest analysis, there are today very advanced software for you (SH5 for example). I personaly don't intend to bloat too much WT with numerous post-contest features.

> 14. How is ESM mode implementing going, still in plans?

In plans. Needs much time to be well done, mostly because it is impossible to do it partially !

> 15. And finally another crazy idea. FOOTSWITCH MODE. Like TR has. If it is NORMAL then everything works normally but in CW contest where FOOTSWITCH is not needed for PTT it could be used for other very useful purposes. For example ALT-K (send CW from keyboard) or CTRL-V (hopefully to be shortcut for AUTOSEND ON/OFF:) or CTRL-ENTER or ALT-C or... User could select the command itself from dropdown or direct entry. Right now we use second footswitch for binding to secondary Radio. Well, if this option is not used then second footswitch could also be used for activating other commands.

Noted but having a footswitch input becomes more difficult everyday as the parallel ports are less used. It then requires other forms of hardware interfacing.

Tnx for your report.

73

Larry - F6FVY

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