[WT-support] WinTest/Other Progs

[Peter Bowyer]

Tom

Sorry if I seem to be picking a fight, but what Larry posted tells us
that they have done exactly what you suggest - they've understood
what's involved in supporting the US domestic contests you're asking
about, and determined that they don't want to risk de-stabilising the
core WT code in order to do so. World domination was never an
objective for WT - having a stable base for the popular international
events is deemed more important.

The consequence is that some events are less easy and therefore less
likely to be implemented, certainly in the near term. That doesn't
mean you shouldn't request them, but should help explain why the
policy is the way it is.

73 Peter

2008/5/7 Tom Taormina <tom at k5rc.cc>:
> Larry;
>
>  I fully understand your position on log modules and contest rules. I submit
>  to you, however, that most of your "target customers" in the US participate
>  in the major QSO parties and many of your "potential customers" are
>  newcomers who get their exposure to contesting in the QSO parties. You need
>  to understand your demographic targets from a non-EU perspective. Perhaps a
>  collaboration with W4TV and MicroHam would be beneficial for WT.
>
>  Tom Taormina, K5RC
>  CQ Contest Hall of Fame
>
>
>  -----Original Message-----
>  From: support-bounces at win-test.com [mailto:support-bounces at win-test.com] On
>
> Behalf Of Laurent HAAS - F6FVY
>  Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 8:48 AM
>  To: support at win-test.com
>  Subject: Re: [WT-support] WinTest/Other Progs
>
>
>
> Hi Peter and all
>
>  Peter Bowyer a écrit :
>
>  > Well, Larry will have to answer that. The contest base is reguarly
>  > expanded. I merely expressed my appreciation for the stance they have
>  > taken to date, I wouldn't like to guess what their future poilcy might
>  > be.
>
>  Preamble : Olivier is the lead programmer of Win-Test. I just express my
>  own opinions on this topic, being a bit more involved in "new" contests
>  additions.
>
>  1/ Win-Test has *not* being designed to allow users or third-party
>  programmers to write their own contest "modules", or to modify the
>  existing ones. Many contests have so specific rules that it is currently
>  impossible to manage them is a generic way in the program core. We have
>  to adapt the core code for them, when possible. Sometimes it would
>  require a major rewrite, we don't want to do. For example, this is a
>  reason why we can't add contests with several "sessions". People found
>  workarounds (like ES5TV found for the EU HF contest). Good for them.
>
>  2/ Our goal is CLEARLY not to add support for every contest of the
>  planet. According to several sources, there are today more than 1000
>  contests per year... Today, we support most of the national and
>  international contests (abt 100), which represent the vast majority of
>  entrants in the contesting community. Apart from very few exceptions, we
>   don't intend to add every QSO party today, mostly because there are
>  very numerous and rules are pretty hard to include in our current core
>  (ex : Rovers with multiple Q depending on his location, etc.). For sure,
>  we could do a "light" version by eliminating those "exotic" rules and
>  classes, but it is not our philosophy (at least, not mine). In short,
>  the TX QP has been written by accident (and is not so well supported,
>  for the reasons expressed few lines above).
>
>  3/ Our choice to add such or such contest, is today much more oriented
>  by its nature (how many entrants, history, rules modifications along the
>  years, published format of the Cabrillo log file and rules, etc.) and
>  the easiness to do so, and the assurance it will not require major
>  modification of the code, to ensure it will not affect stability (in the
>  large sense of this term : points, operating etc. ) of the 100+
>  supported contests (and especially the major international ones : CQWW
>  DX, ARRL DX, CQWW WPX, etc. with all their variants). The more contests
>  we add, the longer (and numerous) are the regression tests.
>
>  We know that the lack of supported QP is currently a major bump for US
>  users (at least, the "casual" contesters) to adopt Win-Test. On the
>  other hand, we always claimed we wanted to favor WT features to help
>  users to seriously compete, rather than the number of supported
>  contests, or - more generally - the number of users. The lists of users
>  in the top 10 boxes of the major contests results confirm our choices.
>
>  73
>
>  Larry - F6FVY
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Peter Bowyer
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