Now, Log4OM is becoming somewhat restricted by its internal structure and it is becoming difficult to support the amount of new features requested and some changes in ADIF protocol that will be a big problem in future implementations of Log4OM and for many internet services (online logs and others).
Until now, the data structure in Log4OM has been strictly connected to the ADIF format, because it was a good starting point to define fields that could be useful in a log.
Recent changes in the ADIF structure (that we did not approved, in the workgroup) has, again, extended the ADIF protocol with "proprietary" fields, adding Clublog, HRDLog, QRZcom fields, SOTA and excluding, by design, other services, award programs and other things.
We appreciate the support to SOTA, HRDLOG and Clublog, but we think that a protocol should not have "specific names" into its fields, because adding a new online service, like hamqth online log, will need a new release of the whole protocol. SOTA support is good, but there are dozens (hundreds) of awards (international or local) that an user can collect, and those are excluded from ADIF protocol by design.
For the above reasons we have decided to move ahead and start working on a new version of Log4OM (Version 2), completely rewritten but taking the design of the actual log and rewriting many of the parts behind the cover. At the same time a small group of interested users has started work on a new, alternative, modern and extensible data exchange format (Log4OM will continue support exports to ADIF 2.7, and 3.0.4 in a future)
Log4OM v.1 (the actual that we know) will continue it's path of enhancements and improvements and will continue to be supported so that you can continue using it for your logging purposes, but part of the resources (read: part of my time) will be moved to the new release and this could have as effect a small slow down in the implementation of new features. Don't ask me when the V2 will be available, I don't know at this time, but we're working on it. Nothing will change for you, we simply have had the pleasure to share this news with other OM
With the new data structure we will have a lot of advantages and some limitations due to the increased complexity of the data structure and our efforts are devoted to keep the program fast and efficient. We will provide a dynamic, user extensible way to manage awards and statistics, hopefully fully user configurable and supporting virtually every type of award and confirmation the user requires.
We, the whole team, are working to provide a good log for our purposes. We're not a group of technicians devoted to software, we're a group of OM that need a good log to store information. This is Log4OM, made by OM for OM
73
Daniele IW3HMH & The Team
