[Dx4win] That darn asterisk

[Randy Farmer]

>Guys, I think you're getting a little over-excited about the DXCC
>listing order problem.  I'm sure it was just an oversight on Paul's part
>(as well as on the part of his unpaid testers) and is easy to fix.  It
>was not done intentionally.  If this is the worst program bug, then I'd
>say he did a pretty good job!

Boy howdy! It's a tribute to the enormous amount of hard work on the 
part of both Paul and his testers that a major new version release 
works so well that we're bellyaching about such minor concerns right 
out of the box. I got my license key last night and finally got to 
get the program installed on my station computer and check it out 
with all the hardware this evening. I found NOT ONE PROBLEM with all 
the hardware interface. Radio control, rotator, DX Doubler control 
via the LPT, Winkey, MMTTY interface, PSK31, it all worked perfectly! 
I expected that such a big rewrite would break some of the hardware 
stuff, but that expectation turned out to be unfounded.

Once I got my license key, I was also able to edit my old Version 7 
log to take advantage of the improvements in the new log format. I 
really appreciate the Frequency field, but that meant I had to do a 
whole lot of editing of imported contest files that had frequency 
information embedded in the comments filed in crazy ways that Jim's 
neat utility wouldn't handle. A few hours of editing exported dxq 
files with Wordpad took care of the problem. The "Set frequency from 
note" function in the Multiple QSO operations is really slick. Once I 
got the frequency information in the Notes for this QSO field 
formatted properly (xx,xxxKHz at the beginning of the line) it 
populated the Frequency field very nicely. The new features in the 
QSO window are a great improvement.

>Paul has been under tremendous pressure to get the program wrapped up,
>and issuing broken keys did not make anything easier for him.  I'm sure
>this and the other reported problems will be fixed up in short order,
>once the deluge of orders dies down.  He's a one-man band now, since
>Steve NR4M has decided to do other things.

I really hope we don't hear anything out of Paul for a couple of 
weeks. He needs some time off. He's got it coming in spades.

73...
Randy, W8FN