[WT-support] Why no BARTG RTTY Support

[Bob Wilson, N6TV]

On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 6:42 AM, James Balls <makidoja at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

> Why not let interested 3rd parties write the template files for Wintest if
> the author does not have the time.


At present, Win-Test runs off of hard-coded contest logic in C or C++ code.
 There are no template files.  At one time, I believe the developers
thought about trying to support such a concept, to allow for a
"user-defined contest," perhaps via LUA script calls.  But it's much harder
to do that you might think, and would probably require major portions of
the code to be rewritten.

One would have to think of every possible parameter for every possible
contest, and it's pretty difficult to come up with a complete list.
 Contests also have subtle rules, unique exchanges, strange multiplier
lists, special Cabrillo requirements, and other scoring and duplicate rules
oddities.  It's very hard to "generalize" all variations to a simple
template that can support every possible contest rule that anyone could
ever conceive of.

Win-Test is a lot simpler than other loggers *because* it is limited to
major contests only (plus some minor contests that are very similar to
major ones, allowing for a quick implementation).

RTTY support was added somewhat late in the development of Win-Test mainly
to please the more casual RTTY operators, not super serious RTTY
competitors running multiple decoders against the same audio.

As for new contest support, it would be nice if priority could be given
based on which contest has the most participants.  I see that about 768
logs were submitted for the 2012 BARTG RTTY contest, vs. 985 for the 2011
California QSO Party.

:-)

73,
Bob, N6TV
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