[Ham-Mac] TrustedQSL Software vs. Macintosh

[Willard Myers]

Not too long ago, someone asked about whether or not software posted 
recently by ARRL might be usable by hams using Macintosh. Here's what I 
found:

Source Forge lists two packages that seemed relevant, so I downloaded 
them both. The archives expand into directories named tqsllib and 
tqsllib-apps (from tqsllib-1.2.tar and TrustedQSL-1.08.tar, 
respectively). Both contain C++ source code files and some support 
files for compiling and testing things.

Last night I built tqsllib on Mac OS X. For the developers among you: 
tqsllib requires installing the expat library (from internet sources); 
the version I found had a problem in its header file. tqsllib also 
requires OpenSSL, which is already installed on Mac OS X, but the 
provided support files don't find it. Both problems aren't hard to work 
around.

The tqsllib package includes a handful of 'testing' command-line 
applications. Once I figured out that the code is looking for the 
TQSLDIR environment variable (not TQSLLIB as documented in the README), 
I got a few of the test routines to run: dumtqsldata, gen_crq, and 
load_cert. station_loc prints a unhelpful abort message, and I haven't 
tried converter.

IMHO, no self-respecting Mac user would put up with these apps -- they 
need to be run in Terminal with unfamiliar incantations to set up the 
'environment'. I don't think it would be productive for me to post them 
anywhere. If a developer wants assistance building libtqsllib.a, I 
would be happy to help with that.

tqsllib-app has some rudimentary Windows apps which provide UIs for the 
tqsllib functions. These are of no use to Macintosh users. An 
experienced Mac developer might want to look at them before developing 
a Mac OS equivalent; I believe the Windows implementations use the 
WxWindows tool kit, which is also available on Mac OS X.

I've no clue how all this plays out on OS 9; I don't even run Classic 
any more. I doubt if it would nearly as easy, since both packages are 
heavily linux-flavored.

Bill, K1GQ