[Dx4win] That darn asterisk

[William Osborne]

I really agree with Randy on the listing order. If you ask ARRL to give you
their computer print out of your records you get active countries followed
by deleted ones with each sub-list in alphabetical order. I think the DX4Win
list should match that one for easy tracking, checking and conflict
resolution.

73
Bill, K5ZQ


-----Original Message-----
From: dx4win-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:dx4win-bounces at mailman.qth.net]
On Behalf Of Randy Farmer
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 7:50 PM
To: dx4win at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [Dx4win] That darn asterisk

I had mentioned in my post yesterday that somehow the Report Listing 
file had mysteriously converted the Minami Torishima prefix from 
JD1/M to JD1/W. I did a little detective work today and found out 
what happened. When I edit the csv Listing file in Wordpad to change 
the asterisk to something that Excel finds more digestible, I also 
routinely convert all the "M" flags (and the "L" flags in Version 7) 
to "W", since my Excel application really only cares about whether 
something is Worked (W), Confirmed (C) or Credited (X). I've been 
doing this for the three years or so since I started using Excel to 
track my DXCC stats and set up submissions. It works fine.

It turns out that even when you tick the "Match whole word only" box 
in the Search and Replace function in Wordpad, it goes ahead and 
changes every occurrence of "/M" to "/W" (thanks, Bill). So not only 
was JD1/M getting changed to JD1/W, HK0/M turned into HK0/W, etc. 
This never caused me any problem with the Version 7 report files, 
because I just dumped the csv file into Excel, selected the 160 
through 6 data cells and pasted the cell contents into my main 
spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is set up just like the Version 6 
listing file, with the active prefixes sorted alphabetically at the 
top of the list followed by the deleted prefixes sorted 
alphabetically at the bottom of the list.

But... the Version 8 Listing format has changed, and now the prefixes 
are listed in straight alphabetical order, with the deleted prefixes 
interleaved with the active prefixes. This means to get the data in 
the order I need for my spreadsheet I have to do a sort by first the 
"D" field and then the Prefix field. When I do this sort, the 
erroneous JD1/W now gets put behind Ogasawara, JD1/O and the 
Ogasawara and Minami Torishima data lines are now reversed.

All of this is a long way of explaining why I'm making a request to 
revise Version 8 in two ways:

1. Use some character other than * to flag entries ineligible for 
DXCC submission in the Report module.

2. PLEASE restore the Prefix order in the Report Listing format to 
that used in Version 7, with the active prefix list followed by the 
deleted prefix list.

Since there will undoubtedly be some fine tuning happening after the 
initial release of V8.01 this would be a good time to make these 
changes. The asterisk issue is really pretty minor, but fixing it 
would make life easier for those of us who import the report file 
into Excel for whatever reason without forcing an intermediate editor 
session to replace the character.

The change in the Listing prefix order is really a giant step 
backwards in user friendliness. There's really no point in cluttering 
the report with dozens of dead prefixes that most users never have, 
and certainly never will, encounter in their logs. Put the deleted 
prefixes at the end of the listing where they won't bother those who 
don't need them.

It may sound like I'm incessantly whining about small things, and 
perhaps I am. But I still really like the new version. I'm looking 
forward to getting my license key so I can start using it in earnest.

73...
Randy, W8FN

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