[PaQSO] RE: QRP, Mults, Scoring, et al

[Goody K3NG]

 >One cannot gloss over a simple fact: The major contest programs don't 
support PAQP because of the non-standard (I was about to write "wierd") 
scoring structure, which makes generating accurate log output a major PITA.

<soapbox>

I won't disagree on the "weird" scoring point, but I have to ask why 
major contest programs have such difficulty dealing with this.  In this 
day and age of programming, an end user should be able to define a 
custom contest from scratch in a program using a set of rules, a wizard, 
or a scripting language.  I've often wondered why logging programs are 
often inflexible in this regard.  Back in the days of DOS programming, 
you pretty much started programming from scratch and it took a lot more 
work to do stuff like this.  Today you have all kinds of libraries, 
widgets, APIs, and code repositories to work with that makes end user 
flexibility much more doable.  (WB3W's program is good example of 
utilizing existing APIs.  He uses Jet for the database and you can 
easily use M$ Access or OpenOffice Base to open and edit the database 
files and even run your own queries. )  In a multi-contest program I can 
envision a contest definition scripting-language interface that could 
handle about any scoring scenario one could throw at it.  Wouldn't it be 
great if we standardized such a language, just like ADIF and Cabrillo 
have standardized log import/export and submission, and have all the 
multi-contest programs support it?  Contest Scoring Definition Language 
(or CSDL) anyone?  Each contest could release its CSDL file each year to 
reflect the rules, the programs just open the CSDL file and follow the 
rules and away you go....

Dreamin...

Goody

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Blog: http://thek3ngreport.blogspot.com/