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Configure download and display of membership information
19-11-2016, 03:28 PM, (This post was last modified: 19-11-2016, 03:32 PM by dk3dua.)
#1
Configure download and display of membership information
Hello,

at every startup my SL 5.93 forces me to download some membership lists. And during import the message "you need Excel installed" come. For some reason the program did not find my excel. or it is wrong version or whatever, the message "you need excel" is not explained in detail. The message comes, no excel is found, and the endless game of loading membership lists always comes at SL start

Is there a way to configure what membership lists to load ?
Is there a way to configure how the needed excel is accessed, or any info which excel version exactly is needed, and if some free excel versions (libre office or the like) are also ok ?

Next question, i can only enable "show memberships" at all, i can not configure it. Some memberships don't interest me (eQSL or LotW) , some other do. It would also be nice to add new membership infos by myself, say i want to see members of some club then it would be nice to configure it.

BTW, is there a way to configure the dx messages window so that i can see membership infos right when the dx cluster spot appears ? If i am hunting members of a special club, to get some award? Say i want to see in dx messages if a call is HSC or FISTS member ?
There are websites who show some club membership in spots like http://pa4n.xs4all.nl/bandmap.html , but can it be included into SL ?


vy73
Thomas
DK3DUA
Reply
19-11-2016, 04:48 PM, (This post was last modified: 19-11-2016, 04:57 PM by EA3GCV.)
#2
RE: Configure download and display of membership information
Hello Thomas,

I will try to reply all your questions.

When importing some award references/club membership list that are in Excel format (such as AGCW, DCE, DEE,DEFE, DERESP,DMVE or HSC) Swisslog makes a try to open a dummy Excel file with Excel. If failed tries to open with OpenOffice/FreeOffice. This is done to check whether Excel is installed or not. If you have Excel installed or OpenOffice maybe you have lost in your system the program association for XLS files. That's the reason Swisslog shows that you don't have Excel installed. I recommend to reinstall Excel/OpenOffice or assign again your XLS file extension to your Excel/OpenOffice program. The only awards that requieres Excel are the DEE and DMVE (OpenOffice can't handle the format of these files). In version 5.94 this will be corrected (they have changed the XLS format) and it will be possible to open then with OpenOffice if Excel is not installed. I use the lists which are available in the official website of every award/club and internally I perfom the data import.

If you don't use a particular award and you want to not be informed to update, simply deactivate the associated statistic. You won't see the update message anymore for the non active statistics.

Currently no configuration of the Membership panel is available. You can activate or deactivate the membership panel to see all clubs supported, but you can't choose which club you want to see. Every user has his own preferences and I didn't think it was necessary to add a particular option to select which club logo you want to see in the panel. I will add your suggestion to the wish list.

Users are not able to add club membership to the panel. It's defined internally by code and it has a lot of code and involved to every club (logo, position, info table associated or online query etc). If you have a suggestion to add more club in the membership panel, please let me know which club and I will see if this club makes available a member list in their website (many clubs don't like to publish their member list). In order the membership panel works well it's very important that the member list can be updated by internet, otherwise it has no sense.

In version 5.94 I will add the CWOPS club according to some user suggestion. Although I try to keep Swisslog very flexible there are things that would be a nightmare to make it more flexible (as the membership panel) due to the lot of code involved. Impossible is nothing!But some functions that may be seen "easy" from user's point of view, behind these "simple" functions (as the membership panel) there is a lot of code involved. Obviously, I will implement this feature if I find in the future an easy way to do this.

I will study your suggestion about membership column in Dx message window. This would require a powerful computer. LotW/eQSL checking in DX message window makes Swisslog hung in older computers. That's the reason I placed an option to disable it. I will add your suggestion to the wish list. It's interesting!

Best 73 and thank you for all your comments and suggestions!
Jordi, EA3GCV
Current developer of Swisslog
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19-11-2016, 06:44 PM,
#3
RE: Configure download and display of membership information
(19-11-2016, 04:48 PM)EA3GCV Wrote: Hello Jordi,

thanks for your reply,

>If you don't use a particular award and you want to not be informed to update, simply deactivate the associated statistic. You won't see the update message anymore for the non >active statistics.

I did not find where to do it, I found create/modify/delete of statistics, but no disable/deactivate ? Can you please give me a hint ?


>I will study your suggestion about membership column in Dx message window. This would require a powerful computer. LotW/eQSL checking in DX message window makes Swisslog >hung in older computers. That's the reason I placed an option to disable it. I will add your suggestion to the wish list. It's interesting!

IMHO it's the most meaningful function to see (some,configurable) membership infos right when spot appears, if you collect qso's for award or so.

But it don't end with simple memberships, normally you may want to see also immediatly in spot window (only some examples):
- is it some IOTA, and have I worked or confirmed this IOTA (analyze commet strings 'island isl. AF- EU- NA- and compare with your worked/confirmed IOTA)
- is it a special station (guess it from callsign length or comments like "SES or special"
- is there any sign for some other stations I'm interested in (WWFF,SOTA,... whatever, analyze commets)
- did I work the callsign before , if you look for new contacts. Use different colours for callsign to indicte it.
- have some useful mouseover-dropdown-menus like qrz.com, callsing analyze (show all spots for call and some analyze), lookup log match in Clublog, ...
- manage a list of callsings or DXCC's etc. ('alarm calls') you want to get infomed when they appear, with optional start and end dates
- load and analyze informations from web (IOTA and DX announcemens) to add them also to list of 'alarm calls'

But I think a log program, especially SL, is doing already such a lot of things so it can't do it all. For my personal use, I made a simple PERL/PHP application to collect all cluster spots and analyze it like mentioned above, maybe you find some ideas for SL.But this analyze stuff is generally another type of software then a logging programm, of course you have to set boundaries...

vy73
Thomas
DK3DUA
Reply
20-11-2016, 11:52 PM, (This post was last modified: 20-11-2016, 11:54 PM by EA3GCV.)
#4
RE: Configure download and display of membership information
Hello Thomas,

In Options | Active statistics you can disable the statistics you don't need. This way Swisslog will work a bit faster.

Regarding your suggestions, in the DX message window IOTA is already analyzed from Comments. Add IOTA statistic to your DX message window and you will see (I have just made a test and works perfectly). I can add other awards with no problems if users send the award name header such as WFF, SOTA etc. If you have a sample how your PHP application analizes these awards will help me to add more awards in the DX message window.

I also like a lot the Membership column idea in the DX message window as reported by the CW Club RBN Spotter. Swisslog currently supports FOC, HSC and SKCC (CWOPS will be supported in version 5.94). I will try to implement FISTS, EHSC, VHSC and SHSC in Membership panel and statistics as well in future versions. I will contact first to their managers if they can provide me a list of members or better a link to download the latest list of members. I have a lot of work in Swisslog! and I have many things in the wish list which I'm planning to implement in future versions. Little by little!

Best 73
Jordi, EA3GCV
Current developer of Swisslog
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24-01-2017, 02:10 PM,
#5
RE: Configure download and display of membership information
Hi Jordi,

sri for late reply, thank you for the tipp with statistics, wow SL is really fast now.

SL IOTA I'll still have to check, to see in DX windows if a new IOTA is mentioned in commet field (SA- OC- AS- etc. with nr not worked or not confirmed) would be very nice.

If you collect club members for awards it would be nice to see in DX spots if a station is member and if you worked the station already. There are much more rules or goals but this is the task for special skimmers or so, I think if SL will just indicate 'member' and 'worked' in a special status field , or with special colours of callsign field or so, it is perfect.
I use a config switch "show all members" or "show only not worked members".

I even mark any callsign with a special colour if not worked already, it's always nice to work a station as 'new one'.

I also mark special stations, wether containing string "SES " in comment, or simply exceed the normal length of callsings.

WWFF and SOTA for example use special strings, simply us them as patterns to find, WWFF or SOTA alone, or xxFF-<numbers> etc.

And, asking clublog for DXCC of DX spots is also important, they now exact DXCC of new / shortly advertised special DXPed calls who often depart from normal DXCC country rules.

vy73
Thomas
DK3DUA
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24-01-2017, 04:48 PM, (This post was last modified: 24-01-2017, 04:49 PM by EA3GCV.)
#6
RE: Configure download and display of membership information
Hi Thomas,

The IOTA is retrieved from the Dx spots if found as EU 124 or EU-124. It works perfectly. I will try to add this function to retrieve WFF or SOTA the same way. Also I will study to implement a column in the DX message window to show the club membership in future versions.

Regarding Club Log DXCC, if you go to Tools | Club Log | Configuration and you check the option "Query and Set DXCC entity from Club Log", Swisslog will perform a query to Club Log to know which DXCC entity is (skipping the country table) when adding QSOs or in DX spots as well. The country table is very well maintained and updated by Erik EI4KF. But if you want to query Club Log to retrieve the DXCC you can do it by activating this option. I don't know any other logging program that can do this ;-)

73
Jordi, EA3GCV
Current developer of Swisslog
Reply
24-01-2017, 07:47 PM,
#7
RE: Configure download and display of membership information
Hi Jordi,

yes I know this Clublog config , but I always thought it only checks and set DXCC in QSO's.
It looks like a function to "Query and set DXCC entities of already esisting QSO's" rather then a "enable/disable Clublog DXCC lookup in DX spots window".
If it also works in DX spots windows, how to disable it (if offline) ? Answer "No" in messsages box ?

Yes SL is the best, it is only to unknown that it still is alive and now have such a new genius maintainer.Statistics in Clublog show SL far behind all other logging software.

vy73
Thomas
DK3DUA
Reply
25-01-2017, 01:59 PM, (This post was last modified: 25-01-2017, 02:01 PM by EA3GCV.)
#8
RE: Configure download and display of membership information
Hi Thomas,

As it's clearly explained in the Club Log Integratin section of the Swisslog help, Swisslog provides 2 different options:

- Setting the "Query and Set DXCC entity from CLub Log" in the Club Log configuration:

"When activated (by default it's deactivated), when adding new QSOs or when a DX spot is received in the DX message window, Swisslog will perform a query to get the DXCC info from Club Log instead of the Swisslog's Country Table. This query is very accurated because the QSO Date is used for the query when adding new QSOs. In DX spots date used is when the DX spot is received".

-  The option to "Set DXCC from Logbook" is used to set the CLub Log DXCC in your existing QSOs in your logbook.

Best 73
Jordi, EA3GCV
Current developer of Swisslog
Reply
11-02-2017, 11:28 AM,
#9
RE: Configure download and display of membership information
Hi Jordi,

detecting DXCC in DX-Spots window seems not to work for me. I configured it like you said, but some spots show no DXCC state like 'c' or so, only a . for 'unknown'.
This was for me a sign that it don't work and the reason I asked how to configure.

Example calls are recently

R2017M
RM94AE

If I use Clublog call tester function they are clearly detected.

My Clublog account is ok, I upload every QSO realtime, in Clublog config both checkboxes are selected, I did a brand new SL installation, it's still so.

?

vy73
Thomas
DK3DUA
Reply
11-02-2017, 04:52 PM, (This post was last modified: 11-02-2017, 04:53 PM by EA3GCV.)
#10
RE: Configure download and display of membership information
Hi Thomas,

These callsigns are recognised as DXCC empty in the country table. I have found a bug that in cases where DXCC was empty in the country table the DXCC query was not performed to Club Log when the option was checked. It will be corrected in version 5.96.

I have also informed Erik to add these callsigns in the country table.

Thank you for the report!!
Jordi, EA3GCV
Current developer of Swisslog
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