[Ham-Mac] Update on the ARRL Logbook of the World (LoTW) electronic QSLing project

[Richard Kriss]

For Macintosh users interested in the LoTW project, the ARRL Letter, Vol 22,
No 22 dated May 30, 2003 [http://www.arrl.org/arrlletter/] contains a status
report on the beta testing and goes on to say:

"...Logging software developers now can get documentation and a Windows DLL
library--as well as complete source code for the TQSL software--at the
SourceForge Web site <http://sourceforge.net/projects"

If you go to the SourceForge Web sit you will see a LoTW project description
posted on July 26, 2001 by Darryl Wagoner, WA1GON concluding

" ....At present, we are committed to making the client-side library and
utilities available for at least the Windows and Linux operating systems. We
hope that developers will step forward to port the code to other operating
systems, and we are committed to supporting that to whatever extent we can.

Development of the client-side library will be headed by Darryl Wagoner,
WA1GON, building on the "Trusted QSL" library which he has independently
developed. 

Developers interested in participating in the LoTW client development
project should contact Darryl Wagoner, WA1GON, at wa1gon@arrl.net."

Based on the posting date this train left the station a long time ago and it
is probably a waste of time and energy for the Mac user community to object
at this time.  My personal concern and opinion has been registered with my
ARRL Director and others;  however, I question if anything can be done to
make the LoTW user interface become platform independent. The banking
industry avoided the platform and operating system issues by adopting the
secure https user interface. There may be good reasons why the development
team decided on a different user interface.

If you would to review the ARRL LoTW Design Specification, it can be
downloaded from http://www.trustedqsl.org/ just click on the "ARRL LoTW"
under Specification on the left.  This is an excellent document dated May
29, 2001 by Dick Green, WC1M and Ted  Demopoulos, KR1G.

I trust the LoTW development team will produce a product that is USEFUL and
will be USED by the DX community.  I will continue to collect QSL cards for
DXCC credits ...the old fashion way.

73 de Dick, AA5VU