[Xlog-discussion] UTF8 support in 0.9cvs, and other wishes

[Stephane Fillod]

Hi Joop,

I've been doing some work on the CVS version of xlog, like adding
support for TRLog (esp. for TLF) and EDI (VHF and higher contest format 
recommanded by IARU region 1). Propagation is amazing on these bands.

Since xlog has been converted to gtk2, the appearance of the font layout is
not the same as in previous versions, and xlog does not support any more
letters with accents. Actually, if I enter accents in the QSO window,
they are handled fine. However, if the accent is autogenerated like the
'DATE' field or is coming from a log file, then the string is truncated
and I get plenty of the following message in the terminal that started
xlog:

  ** (xlog:1850): WARNING **: Invalid UTF8 string passed to 
pango_layout_set_text()

I get also some of this:

  ** (xlog:1850): CRITICAL **: file pango-layout.c: line 1715 
(pango_layout_get_cursor_pos): assertion `index >= 0 && index <= 
layout->length' failed

anyway, a bit of googling brought me to this page:

  http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-list/2002-October/msg00133.html 

which basically instruct to convert strings from local representation to
UTF8 format:

        gchar *tmp;
        ...
        tmp = g_strdup (g_locale_to_utf8("hello world", -1, 
                NULL, NULL, NULL));
        g_object_set (G_OBJECT(window), "title", tmp, NULL);
        g_free (tmp);

Since I don't know much about the gtk part in xlog, I would prefer let you
see what can be done on this topic.


Wishlist:
* When I change the theme color in the preferences, everything is
  changed but the locator "window". Is it possible to fix this?
* Since the gtk2 convertion, a lot more space is wasted between rows in
  the log window. For example, with previous version, I was able to see
  35+ rows in the log window. Now, 20 rows barely show, even tough my font
  size is 10. This "interline" space gives even more trouble to the
  QSO window, where all the fields+DXCC window+locator window do not fit
  in the window/screen height. Too bad, on top of that, this leaves no room
  for the "worked before" window :(  I can send you screenshots if you are
  not experiencing this problem.
* BTW, the workedb4 feature is great. I love it.
  Maybe adding a keyboard shortcut to it would be nice too. 
  Having the close button of the window much thiner would help
  minimizing the previous problem.
  Also remembering the window geometry (size and position) would be
  nice, as well as starting the find at window opening.
* The "type and find" feature is groovy. I don't know what others would
  think of it, but I would prefer the feature to only fill in the
  *empty* fields of the QSO window.
  Maybe a tooltip over the checkbox in the preference dialog explaining
  shortly what is "type and find" may help newcomers.
* Some kind of atlas window would be pretty darn cool.
  In the preferences, an image filename (jpg or png format) 
  would be specified with the longitude and latitude of its top left
  corner. Then the coordinate of the locator/DXCC would be displayed
  in this "atlas" window. Yes, I have various maps hanging on my walls, 
  sometimes it's fun to stare at them, sometime you have less
  time during short openings, etc.
  To be more picky, having 2 maps would be better. One for distances
  less than, say 2000Km, ie. appropriate for VHF and upper band work,
  and a second one for any other distances, ie. the whole world
  aka our lonely planet (there has not been any DXpedition to the moon
  or mars yet, but we'll modify xlog when it's gonna happen :)
  Throw in a checkbox to display only the station in QSO window,
  or also all the stations in the current log, and this eye candy
  gadget will make more than one young ham dream.

* A last one from Dave kc1di, collected from another mailing list:
<<
It is also helpful if there is some way to select the log enteries you want
to transfer.. X-log can do Adif but there is as yet not selection process
and that is unfortunate because everytime I want to upload my log info to
Eqsl.cc the entire log has to be reuploaded. For me this is not a great
problem but for DX stations that make thousands of qsos it may infact be a
big problem.
>>
AFAIAC, it would be better to not implement this selection on the
export, but rather add to xlog the ability to copy part of a log pane
to another - eventually new, - log pane. This would be much more
versatile. Or what about a "split" function? A log would be split
in 2 new logs apart the selected QSO. Well, I don't know really what
would be the best. Personnaly, when I have to do that kind of stuff, 
I just fire up vim (or any other text editor) and play with the file.
ASCII file formats are your friends in such case.


Cheerio,
Stephane