Creating A standard in not easy. That said, I think it is safe to say
at this point that Cabrillo is THE standard that everyone uses (or
could easily adopt as THE standard). I have no doubt there was much
gnashing of teeth, calls of conspiracy and all manner of bad things
were said in creating ANY standard, not just Cabrillo. Take a look at
Open XML for a recent example.
It also seems to me that Cabrillo is flexible enough to be extended to
meet specific needs. Identifying the transmitter in Multi-two comes
to mind. At this point, I think any glaring problems with Cabrillo
have largely been addressed - even more reason to offer it up as THE
standard.
As for paper logs, I do understand there are cases where that is what
the participant has, and that is all they have. The question in my
mind is - why is the contest sponsor responsible for creating an
electronic document from paper logs? Will there be
comments/corrections/notes/whatever of interest that will be lost in
said conversion to an electronic format? Most certainly. At the same
time, this data is not available in a pure data log. This information
was never recorded, and is not available. Why should we expect this
information with paper logs?
Computers have been with us forever, and at this point in time I am
having some trouble understanding why anyone would not have access to
a computer/the ability to submit logs in an electronic format. Even
if there was an elderly person who still did his/her logging on paper,
they should be able to press a family member/friend/neighbour to type
up their log prior to submitting it.
Just asking the questions that are on everyones mind :-)
Tom - VE3CX
On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 8:42 PM, Ron Notarius W3WN <wn3vaw@verizon.net> wrote:
> Ah, but that is one of the problems Tom.
>
> Cabrillo is A standard. But not THE standard.
>
> I seem to recall a lot of shouting when Cabrillo was announced, developed,
> and finally introduced... and even improved. As I recall, there were a lot
> of tempers flaring over the mere insinuation that Cabrillo was part of some
> vast plot by the ARRL to somehow "take over" control of the contest
> community... and so on and so forth ad infinitum ad nauseum.
>
> So what's the solution? I'm not certain. Undoubtably, some contests will
> eventually choose to adopt one primary "standard" format, but allow some
> "secondary" alternate ones... be it a format like ADIF, or a database
> structure like an SQL or Access or dBase file, or a "standard" layout like a
> spreadsheet format. Whatever, so long as the contest committee is
> comfortable with file formats that their log checkers and log checking
> software can deal with.
>
> And, BTW, how will you handle paper logs?
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