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For many years, hams have been using Morse Runner as an effective practice tool for improving their CW copying and pileup handling skills. All along, users have expressed interest in additional contest support. Over the past few years, a few developers have added additional contests to Morse Runner, but not in a coordinated manner.
In this project, Morse Runner will be enhanced to support multiple contests along with combining features and bug fixes from various independent development efforts. Initial contests will include ARRL Field Day, CQ WPX, CWOPS CWT, NCJ NAQP, etc. Any contest with a corresponding call history file could be implemented.
A short video introducing this project can be found here. It covers why we started the community edition and our goals.
| International | US/NA | Japan | Other |
|---|---|---|---|
| ARRL DX | ARRL Field Day | JARL ALL JA | CWOPS CWT |
| CQ WPX | ARRL Sweepstakes | JARL ACAG | K1USN Slow Speed Test |
| CQ WW | NCJ NAQP | HST (High Speed Test) | |
| IARU HF |
Our goal is to create a community of users and developers who share a common vision of improving and supporting the Morse Runner Contest Simulator.
- Improve end-user experience by supporting multiple popular contests.
- Promote a community-based collaborative development environment.
- Incorporate enhancements and bug fixes from other Morse Runner versions.
- Maintain embedded operation with select logging programs (e.g. N1MM and DxLog).
- Integrate a recent Linux port.
- Perhaps develop training materials, including club presentations and end-user training.
Anyway you want...
We need developers, contest advocates, testers, CW trainees and trainers, documentation writers, release coordinators, open source development advocates, project advisors, and Delphi and Lazarus development environment experts. We hope to grow a community of contributors who can develop and maintain Morse Runner over time. By establishing a community-based approach focused on a common project, we will be more efficient than individual efforts working on separately forked/cloned projects.
Please refer to CONTRIBUTING.md for more information. Developers can refer to DEVELOPERS.md for additional on-boarding information and build instructions.
Below is a high-level overview of project activities over the next year.
Note - My involvement will be limited over the next 6-9 months due to ongoing family commitments. I will keep up on discussions and encourage others to continue development as they can. If bugs are found, I'll work to get them fixed and released. Thank you, Mike W7SST.
Projects we are currently working on...
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GUI Enhancement (v1.90) - Jim, K6OK, will continue leading our efforts to develop a new Morse Runner GUI. We are hoping to release the new GUI as version 1.90 sometime late this year or early next year. If you are interesting in helping and providing early feedback, please join our github Community and let us know. We are always looking for additional project advocates, developers, testers and users. Developer skills are not required; only an interest in improving Morse Runner Community Edition.
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Resolve 100-person limit on groups.io - Groups.io has a 100-person limit in their free-plan. When we launched MRCE, we formed a user-group on Groups.io. This group grew to 100 user limit by February 2024. We plan to start a discussion in our GitHub Discussions area to explore ideas to resolve this issue. Stay tuned for an announcement on both GitHub and groups.io.
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Focus on Quality - Address important quality issues as they are reported.
Projects that we'll work on next (as time permits)...
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Redefine our strategy moving forward - Originally, we had hoped additional developers would step forward and join our coding efforts. We currently have a core group of advocates that are providing awesome project direction and insight and we appreciate their involvement and efforts. However, we do need to slow down and consider what the next steps will be given limited developer resources. There has been some preliminary work on a GUI redesign and several contests have been suggested. We will start discussions amoungst the core development group on how to proceed.
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Developer on-boarding - Help new developers get up to speed with compiling and pushing to the project.
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Additional contests - Based on community input, we will consider adding a few more contests based on interest and available developer time.
Projects that we'll work on later...
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Document git setup - Document a recommended git setup to avoid issues with CRLF caused by different git setups on individual computers and git setups. Document this issue so other developers can understand avoid this issue.
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Multi-contest design - Discuss the design approach for supporting multiple contests within Morse Runner based on FD prototype and most recently ARRL DX Contest. Look for patterns across multiple contests and propose interface(s) to be used to generalize an individual contest.
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SO2R Investigation - Investigate whether it is possible to support SO2R using MRCE. Perhaps build a prototype for evaluation and user feedback and requirements.
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Maintain existing integration with N1MM and DxLog. N2IC has done work to integrate Morse Runner within N1MM and DxLog. We want to continue this work to allow Morse Runner to run with these popular logging programs.
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Team-based (developer/advocate) contest development model - promote the notion of a small contest development team consisting of a developer and one or more user/advocates. This team will develop and test an individual contest before it is released for general use. Please review Issues pages for contest recommendations and add a comment to your favorite contests. Also mention if you're interested in helping as either an advocate or developer for a given contest.
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Multi-contest implementation - finish the initial implementation of the multi-contest codebase. Major interfaces are developed and running. Contests are added by extending these interfaces only. Most switch statements in code have been removed.
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Add additional contests - by now, adding a contest should be fairly straight-forward. Perhaps adding a contest will need two people, a contest developer and a contest advocate. This team can develop and test a contest before releasing to general use.
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Merge selected features and bug fixes - (As time permits...) Identify and integrate features from other MR branches into the main release branch.
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Project Wiki - Explore idea of developing a project wiki containing additional project details, including recommended setups (both developer and user), design discussions, compile instructions, coding standards, release criteria, etc. This will also include details on adding a new contest to Morse Runner. Is this implemented within github or elsewhere?
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Localization/Internationalization - As time permits and resources become available, consider providing multiple language support to MRCE. Please let the development know if you have experience in adding multi-language support to Delphi-based or Lazarus-based applications.
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User-defined contests - Explore notion of user-defined contests using a contest configuration file. Perhaps a yaml file? Can this be similar to N1MM contest definition file?
- Develop FD prototype - Build a FD prototype building upon work from prior authors. The approach taken introduces a table-driven design along with the notion of generalized exchange fields (e.g Exch1=3A, Exch2=OR). Contests include CQ WPX, CWOPS CWT, ARRL FD, NCJ NAQP, and HST. Contest is selected using a drop-down list. This prototype was shared with a few individuals in early June.
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Develop Community Guidelines - Discuss and adopt community guidelines for contributing to this project, including roles, code of conduct, best practices, guidelines, expectations, adherence to standards, etc.
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Launch Community Repository - Create a single repository containing most major development projects/branches by various MR authors. Over time portions these projects, including individual features and bug fixes, can be independently extracted and merged into a common development branch.
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Invite prior authors - Invite all known MR authors to join and contribute to this effort. Encourage them to at least connect as a "Watcher" of this project and share any personal knowledge they may have with this project.
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Standardize git setup - Resolve git setup issues with CRLF caused by different git setups on individual computers and git setups. Perform git database normalization so all files across all projects are handled in a consistent manner. Document this issue so other developers can understand avoid this issue.
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Release FD prototype (v1.80) - Release the FD prototype to allow others to see the general direction of the project and solicit early feedback. Release expected late September 2022.
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Solicit early feedback - Invite users to try the FD prototype and provide early feedback. Discussions can occur within github regarding this prototype and future directions. Ask users to suggest which contests should be added next.
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Foster Community Growth - We are looking for ways to grow this community. To achieve this, we want to adequately document this project by improving community documentation, including README.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, DEVELOEPRS.md, etc., files. Once complete, we will reach out to various user communities (e.g. N1MM forums, and perhaps specific clubs).
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N1MM Integration Design Discussions - Work with Steve, N2IC, to discuss extensions to N1MM-to-MorseRunner protocol to support additional contests (e.g. Arrl Field Day). This is a feasibility study only and will not be released until early spring 2023.
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Add CQ WW Contest - simple contest with RST and CQ-Zone. Release 1.81.
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Add ARRL DX Contest - international contest with RST and State/Province (US & Canada) or RST and Power (DX Stations). Release 1.82.
Release 1.83...
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Add K1USN Slow Speed Contest (SST) - The CWOPS Community has reached out and expressed interest in using MRCE as one of their recommended training tools for their CW classes. Farnsworth CW timing support will be implemented for this contest only.
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Add JARL All Japan and ACAG contests - These contests are being implemented by JR8PPG. Thank you!
Release 1.84...
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Add IARU HF Championship Contest - Implement support for the upcoming IARU HF Championship Contest.
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Improve CQ WPX Contest - Improved serial number generation and replaced the NR Digits menu with Serial NR menu.
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Merge F6FVY improvements - This includes improvements to add new callers are added after qso, F1 improvements, speed increment/decrement, remove beep after qso, F7 improvements to cause Dx stations to call again, and mouse wheel controls RIT.
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Quality improvements.
Release 1.85...
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Add ARRL Sweepstakes Contest - Added support for the upcoming ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, improved Screen Logging with error reporting (exchange errors displayed in Red), updated a few call history files and fixed several bugs.
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GUI Enhancement Discussions - The team, lead by Jim, K6OK, has been working on an updated GUI with for ergonomic enhancements. Jim has shared a preliminary version with other team members. If interested in helping, please join our github group and let us know. Perhaps build a prototype to collect useability feedback from project advocates and users.
TODO - add a paragraph or two regarding the history of MR.
VE3NEA, of CW Skimmer fame, was the original author of MorseRunner. 9A5K later made some changes and interfaced it with DXLog.Net. Later, I ported it to a development environment that was free (instead of $500) and interfaced it to N1MM+. Many thanks to K1XM for letting me peruse the DXLog.Net code.
Source: Steve London, N2IC, N1MMLoggerPlus forum.
The following table shows the release history of Morse Runner. Links are provided back the commit history page of the corresponding github repository. Please update this table if you find additional versions.
It is interesting to note that with all the independent work on Morse Runner over the years, there have been no duplicate version numbers.
| Date | Repo/Author | Version/Link | Features/Contests |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2004-201x | VE3NEA | 1.1-1.6x | original version, CQ WPX, HST. |
| unknown | 9A5K (sk) | unknown | additional changes; interface with DXLog.Net. |
| June 2015 | VE3NEA | 1.68 | bug fixing; last release by Alex. |
| Nov 2015 | DF9TS | no release | Ansi support, some changes to Log display window. |
| July 2016 | BH1SCW (BG4FQD) | 1.69 | adds Hi-Score web page, Unicode support |
| Aug 2016 | BH1SCW (BG4FQD) | 1.70 | show callsign info in status window |
| Sept-Nov 2016 | BH1SCW (BG4FQD) | 1.71 | bug fixes |
| Jan 2017 | BH1SCW (BG4FQD) | 1.72 | bug fix/ export qso/ PgUp,PgDn functions/ prefix judgment/ slow cw settings |
| Oct 2018 | F6FVY | 1.68.2+ | New callers are added after qso, F1 improvements, speed increment/decrement, remove beep after qso. |
| Oct 2018 | F6FVY | 1.68.3+ | improve F7 ('?') to cause Dx stations to call again. |
| Nov 2018 | F6FVY | 1.68.4+ | mouse wheel controls RIT, callsign lookup using master.dta. |
| Oct 2018 | N2IC | 1.68+ | f6fvy's DxCount bug fix |
| April 2020 | N2IC | 1.70+ | adds CQ WW, allow 2 instances of MR to be running (one for each radio w/ N1MM). |
| May 2020 | N2IC | 1.70+ ?? | (#3,#4) bug fixing, msgTU from N1MM |
| May 2020 | N2IC | 1.70+ ?? | (#5, #6, #7) bug fixing, msgTU from N1MM |
| Jan 2021 | N2IC | 1.70+ ?? | (#8) Add set pitch handler for side tone frequency |
| Nov 2021 | CT7AUP | 1.71a | CWOPS CWT Contest, CW Rx Speed adjust. |
| Jan 2022 | JR8PPG | JA-1.68.1 | MorseRunnerJA - JARL All Japan. |
| Feb 2022 | JR8PPG | JA-1.68.2 | MorseRunnerJA - JARL All Japan, ACAG, and CQ Wpx. |
| June 2022 | zmetzing | 1.68z | Linux port of VE3NEA's 1.68 codebase. |
| Summer 2022 | W7SST | 1.80 | FD prototype with CQ WPX, CWOPS CWT, ARRL FD, and NCJ NAQP. |
| October 2022 | W7SST | 1.81 | First general release, adds CQ WW. |
| December 2022 | W7SST | 1.82 | - Add ARRL DX Contest - MRCE Announcement release. |
| March 2023 | W7SST, JR8PPG | 1.83 | - Add K1USN Slow Speed Contest (SST), - Add JARL All Japan and ACAG Contests |
| March 2024 | W7SST, F6FVY | 1.84 | - Add IARU HF Championship Contest - Improve CQ WPX Contest - Merge F6FVY improvements |
- Update MR History section
- What other sections or topics should be included here?
- Reach out to VE3NEA to see if he has any documentation, materials, or old emails that can be added to the wiki.
- Explore using Mermaid or PlantUML languages for adding diagrams to this documentation. Perhaps the Roadmap itself can be generated using PlantUML Ghant chart syntax. Or, we look into using GitHub's project boards.