Version 3.13, 01-11-1997

NEW FEATURES

• TurboLog has now received a new installation procedure. We realized that many users already got stuck while installing the imploded code from the installation disk. Also, in many cases the "install" command was forgotten. This is all very understandable in view of the fact that a new installation may be performed only twice a year in a maximum.
• Thus our goal had to be to design a procedure which is:
  1. Equal to the procedure of many other installations,
  2. Almost fully automatical,
  3. Either working 100% or not at all in case of an error,
  4. Help to save your customized files,
  5. Only prompt you for overwriting where you could have made changes,
  6. To save the master file from being destroyed accidently,
  7. To save you and us time and frustration. Here is what we created, hoping that it will cover the forestanding features:

NEW INSTALLATION:

On the DOS-prompt type and enter: C:\>A: (if masterdisk in A-drive)

1. Type and enter your call and destination of TURBOLOG directories: A:\>DJ9KG C:
2. Press any key at the end of the installation procedure.(You are prompted to do so!)
3. Type TURBOLOG and press enter to start the program: C:\TURBOLOG>TURBOLOG

   REMARK: In step 2 the program`s default directory name is chosen (=TURBOLOG). You can equally well specify any legal name of your choice. You then need to type: A:\DJ9KG C:\TL_DIR This example will create all TURBOLOG files under a root directory named TL_DIR on your hard disk C.

PRINTER DRIVERS

In order to allow TL to work with the many nice and inexpensive modern printers on the market an open architecture for printer adaptation was created. Full use of the individual features of the very many printers can only be made by providing specific printer drivers. We selectet a generic set of drivers which will cover most of the products currently available. Generic means that the whole family of HP-deskjet will all work with just one driver, in this case with the driver named HPDJ500.PDV, for example. TL now is equipped with the following drivers:

1. EPL4100 .PDV
2. EPSON .PDV
3. FX80 .PDV
4. HPDJ500 .PDV
5. HPLJ2 .PDV
6. IBMPRO .PDV
7. LQ1050 .PDV
8. NECP6 .PDV
9. NECP7 .PDV
10. OKI .PDV
11. SIMPLE .PDV
12. SQ870 .PDV
13. STARLC20.PDV
14. STARNB24.PDV

This list appears under the print menu (see below). If you have an old fashion dotmatrix printer you would select SIMPLE .PDV from this menu. If you do not find your printer family on the list you need to study your printer`s manual in order to find out to which other family your device is declared to be compatible. There is most likely compatibility to at least one of the following:

• EPSON
• IBMPRO
• HPLJ2
• HPDJ500

Then select one of those. In very few cases it may be necessary to run a test in order to find out which one performs best. All driver files are stored under the ....\DATA directory as xxxx.PDV. Do not alter any one of them.

The structure chosen is basically the same as with the TNCs. All available drivers, found by TL in the DATA directory will automatically be loaded on the menu list. Thus no more changes need to be made to the programm itself in case a new type of printer comes out. This is the basic philosophy of what we denote by "open architecture".

The normal procedure is that you would receive new drivers automatically with the update service of TURBOLOG COMMUNICATIONS. Sorry for possible owners of GDI-printers. These devices do not work with DOS which disqualifies them to be used with TurboLog III.

QSL LABELS:

TurboLog now has powerful modern QSL-printing facilities. The user has full access to all printing parameters. The print drivers allow using fancy features of modern printers in a straight forward manner. Not much of all the improvements is visible on the first glance since we tried our best to keep the menue-system in the wellknown style. Below the user interface, however, a completely new program unit was implemented as an object oriented module. This now is easy to maintain and to expand if necessary.

Here are the main new QSL label features:

• You can select whether you want to print single QSO labels or multi QSO labels. TL automatically recognizes the number of QSL lines which fit on the label size of your choice. This is an ideal feature in order to save money on QSL cards if, e.g. you worked an expedition 10 times on various bands or modes (or you are an expe- ditioneer yourself!!).
• You can design your QSL labels to whatever size and virtually any layout as given by the many pre-prepared label sheets on the market.
• You can run modern type deskjet, laserjet or old fashioned dotmatrix printers for endless paper, all at the same time.
• You can select a number of print styli, such as bold, condensed, italic etc.. within the same print line. Thus interesting graphical effects can be obtained.
• You do not waste any lable sheet since you can start printing at a label offset of any choice.
• All measures can be selected as metric (millimeters) or nonmetric (inches).
• Paper sizes can be selected from the menue in 3 formats: Legal, DIN A4 and endless.
• You can now select a range of QSOs for printing also by tagging the start and stop QSO number accordingly.
• A new placeholder was added to the list. $K is the keyword from the log record keyword field. If you place here the call of the QSL manager you can now print things like:` To Radio: XX9XX QSL via W3HNK `.

COUNTRY.DAT:

• The confusion with the release of some ambiguous US-prefixes such as: KH7 being Hawaii as well as Kure-Island, KP3,etc. was intentionally left unresolved for the time being since fortunately only a few stations appeared with ambiguous calls as yet. Please use the built-in assign facilities of TurboLog after you have identified the genuine location of the station. For the time being this is less burdon to the user than to choose true country status from a menue in any case of a KH6-call being observed, for example.
• 3DA was marked as the main prefix for Swaziland, formerly 3D6.
• PY0 was removed as a possible prefix for mainland Brazil. Fortunately no more mainland stations were using this prefix in the past.
• The CE0`s were re-established as the main prefixes. (Instead of XR0 and XQ0). This removed another source of nicest confusion.

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