[Dx4win] Merging country files

[Jim Reisert AD1C]

I did a couple of experiments here to confirm what I thought about 
merging country files.  What that web page says is true:

   http://www.country-files.com/dx4win/index.htm#Merge

If you merge the NEW country file into your OLD country file, the 
entities will NOT get merged.  This means the old PJ2 and PJ7 aren't 
deleted (really, just means END date is set to 10/10/10), and the new 
PJ's aren't added.  It also means the prefix mappings are not merged, so 
any PJs you work will be given the old QTH.

If you merge your OLD country file into the NEW country file, you get 
the benefit of the new entities as well as prefix mappings.  So all the 
PJs should work "out of the box".  Remember, merging only imports these 
four items from the old country file:

     Exception calls
     IOTAs
     QSL managers
     QSL addresses

Nothing else is merged.  The theory is that this preserves the "user 
data".  IOTAs may have needed merging in the past, but it is not really 
necessary now, because the RSGB has assigned provisional IOTA reference 
numbers to all groups that have not yet been activated.

I do see one potential problem, but one that should not have happened 
this time.  If you have callsign mapping to one of the old PJ prefixes, 
say PJ2 (which is now PJ2/D), after the merge, it will still be mapped 
to PJ2, which is in fact the *new* entity, not the old old one.  I'm 99% 
certain that no one should be affected by this, since the historic list 
of old PJ calls (mostly from the 1960s) hasn't changed in many 
revisions.  The way to tell if you are affected by this is to search 
your log (using F8) for both the PJ2 and PJ7 prefixes (i.e. the new 
one).  If you see any QSOs before 10/10/10 with either of those two 
entities, something is wrong (yes, DX4WIN does allow one to log a QSO 
with the new entities before 10/10/10).

One could argue that the old prefixes (PJ2 and PJ7) should have been 
left alone, and the new prefixes should have been called something else 
(like PJ2/C and PJ7/S or something like that).  Sorry, that's not the 
way we've been doing it.  Fortunately, the case of a primary prefix 
(like PJ2 or PJ7) changing from one entity to another is pretty rare.  I 
think the last one was OK changing from Czechoslovakia to Czech Republic 
(YU is still what's left of Yugoslavia, same entity).

So bottom line: if you MUST merge (and it's not the recommended method), 
you must merge OLD into NEW, which means you must move your old 
DX4WIN.CTY to a save place, download the new one into your SAVE 
directory, then merge the old one into it.  The other way will NOT get 
you what you want.

73 - Jim AD1C

p.s. the reason I haven't replied to the list today is that I've been 
busy working PJs (and other stuff).  It's been a good couple of days so 
far, and the weekend isn't over yet!

-- 
Jim Reisert AD1C, <jjreisert at alum.mit.edu>, http://www.ad1c.us