Programming issues
Displaying 1-6 of 6
| Feb 12th 2013, 23:08 | |
W0WJRTotal Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
I've been working with the DXCC list and am kind of frustrated. For a file that is supposed to be used by programmers, this has some problems. What I would like to do is update it to xml format and fix the typos that I've found. I sent an email to an address I found on the site but haven't got a response. So, is there anyone on this list that could help me. My email is wjr@ksu.edu. |
| Feb 13th 2013, 16:48 | |
aa6eTotal Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
IMHO, DXCC countries lists are complicated, because of weirdness in prefix assignments, abetted by DXCC's rules of what qualifies as an entity. (And further abetted by jurisdictional changes over the years.) Putting the list into an XML format is a good idea (if it hasn't already been done! There are some out of date Ham Radio Deluxe files at http://www.ham-radio.ch/countries/) It forces you to think about the structure of the data, with all the odd features. Doing this and noting problems along the way could be helpful to ARRL's administration of the program, too. The "knowledge" obviously exists already, but putting it into a standardized language like XML helps communicate it to external software. Of course, any new format like this needs to be updated in sync with new DXCC listings. It's not a one-time operation. If you find possible errors or ambiguities, by all means report them to ARRL (Bill NC1L, bmoore@arrl.org), but you might post them, if you want to discuss in this forum. 73 Martin Ewing AA6E (An ARRL Tech Advisor, but not associated with the awards programs.) |
| Feb 13th 2013, 20:33 | |
W0WJRTotal Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
The actual typo I found was Cuba where the prefix is listed as "CM, C0" and should be "CM, CO", i.e. change zero to oh. The Brazil prefixes, the islands in particular, are kind of confusing the way they are written and Russia was really bad. I've written special code to handle them but there is a much better way to do it. The better way is simply to have the prefix written as a regex, regular expression. Most modern languages, e.g. Java and C#, have a regex equals method as part of the standard library. Doing a callsign look up that subsets on the first character of the callsign and then finds the longest matching prefix regex would be very simple to code and efficient. I'd also like to find out what the "/" means in the prefix. Everything else in the prefix was either defined in the document or it was obvious to me what was meant. The "/" isn't either. I'd also like to find a shapefile or similar for ITU and CQ boundaries. The IOTW file has lat/lon points that define the area but I haven't found the same for these two. Currently, when I do a lookup, I have to ask the user which area the contact is in when it's ambiguous. For some foreign callsigns, a qrz lookup has this info but I haven't seen them in US lookups. This information is on map graphics but I can't find it in a text file. Finally, I'm a newbie on this site. When I signed up, I didn't realize that everyone uses their callsign as their user id. Having just looked at the topics list and noticed that every poster used their callsign, except me, I'm wondering if it's possible to change my user id? Editing my profile didn't give me that option so I'm just wondering if some kind soul out there knows if it is possible and, if so, how? |
| Feb 14th 2013, 00:06 | |
W1VTSuper Moderator Total Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
This page lets you change your user id. http://www.arrl.org/Users/edit You may need to wait for email related changes to update in the system for security reasons. Zack Lau W1VT ARRL Senior Lab Engineer |
| Feb 14th 2013, 03:25 | |
W0WJRTotal Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
Thanks. I had looked at that page and for some reason it didn't dawn on me that I could change it once I had set it. sigh. |
| Jan 6th 2014, 15:58 | |
n1ywbTotal Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
Did you ever find a DXCC entity shapefile or any other useful amateur GIS data? |
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