The messages were twelve boxes in a dialog, which meant no labels, no
search-and-pounce set, and no way to read a file somebody published. They are
now the file itself: right-click any function key button under the entry
window, or the two buttons in Config ▸ Keyer and messages, and the text of an
N1MM .mc file opens in a plain editor with Import, Export and Back to the
defaults.
MessageFile reads that format by N1MM's rules. A line starting with # is a
comment; every other line is a label, a comma and the message, with && standing
for one & in a label. Which key a line belongs to is decided by where it is and
nothing else: the first twelve lines are F1 to F12 while running, the next
twelve the same keys while searching, and a file that stops part way through the
second twelve leaves the rest sending what they send while running. A blank line
in the middle is a key with nothing in it, which is what the manual says; the
newline that ends the last line is not, which it does not say, but no .mc file
in the world means its final newline as a message.
Two things fall out of this. The buttons now say what the file says, and they
change when the operator moves between running and searching, so the labels are
the documentation N1MM's manual suggests writing them as. And the search set is
real: ESM's F2 while searching can be a different message from the one it sends
while running, which is how the file was always meant to be used.
Settings keep the file text and carry the twelve stored messages into it on
first read, with the labels this program used then, so nobody loses what they
had typed.
The editor is deliberately a text box rather than a grid of fields: importing,
exporting and editing are then the same thing, and the comments an operator
writes in the file survive being edited here. The telnet window's buttons can
use the same editor later.
Running it caught two: Save as the default button ate the Enter key that a
multi-line editor needs, and the button labels did not follow the move between
run and search until they were redrawn rather than only rebuilt.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ESM is how most people run N1MM, and it was not here at all — not in the code,
not even in the list of what is missing. Config ▸ ESM turns it on and it stays
on between runs.
The decision is a table in N1MM's function-key documentation, and it is written
here as one: the state of the callsign and exchange boxes, whether the station
is running or searching, and whether the call and the exchange have gone out
already, give the function keys Enter sends and whether the contact is logged
after them. Esm.Decide is that table and nothing else, so it is tested against
every row rather than by clicking.
Searching: type a call, Enter sends your call, space moves to the exchange, and
once the exchange is filled in Enter sends yours and logs. Running: Enter calls
CQ, a call in the box makes Enter send his call and the exchange, and the next
Enter ends the contact and logs it. A dupe gets QSO B4 while running and nothing
while searching, unless dupes are worked, which is what N1MM recommends and what
this does out of the box. F1 puts a searching station into run mode.
The entry window highlights the keys Enter would send next, so what is about to
happen is on the screen rather than in the operator's head. `=` sends whatever
Enter last sent. Escape and F12 put ESM back to the start of a contact.
Send Corrected Call is in as well: copy SM3AB, send it, fix it to SM3ABC, and
the message that ends the contact goes out as "SM3ABC TU DL1ABC". That is why
N1MM's documentation says to put ! in F5 rather than {CALL}, so the default F5
message is now ! . F6 is QSO B4, which is the message ESM sends a dupe; it used
to repeat the exchange, which no part of the table asks for.
{EXCHSENT} means something again, now that there is an ESM state for it to set.
Worked end to end against a fake cwdaemon: a search-and-pounce contact logged in
four keystrokes, a run contact in three, both with the right text on the keyer
in the right order, and the corrected call in front of the last message.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The function keys send through cwdaemon or a WinKeyer, with N1MM's message
macros. Escape stops sending.
Settings are read with the reflection serializer rather than a generated one:
the generated one hands back null for every property the file leaves out
instead of the value the property is declared with, which crashed the program
the first time a new setting was added.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The entry window types contacts and colours them as they are typed; the log,
check, bandmap, score and packet windows read the same session. Contacts are
shared with the other stations of a multi-operator entry in N1MM's contact
message, so an N1MM station on the same network sees them too.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
