FediFriday Winlink Net Form

WARNING: This is experimental, could use some more work, exercise caution.

Usage: For the participants

You want the contents of form directory (specifically, the files in ffwn.zip - Winlink can be finicky about line endings in text files defining forms, and despite me trying to be explicit about them to Github, just downloading this text file from the source tree might not work for you. This zip file will.) to be installed into your Winlink client to create a message from a Winlink form. The advantage of using the form is that the resulting message is guaranteed to be machine-readable, which saves hair on the net controller. If this is impossible (like when checking in with APRS) you will have to manually format the message:

To: <net controller's callsign>
Subject: FFWN

<callsign>,<firstname>,<city>,<state/province/locale>,<country>,<mastodon username>,<VHF/HF/APRS/Telnet/Other>
<Your answer to this week's freeform question.>

But if you can, please use the form. Refer to numerous tutorials around the net and YouTube on how to create a message using a form.

Installing for RMS Express

Copy the contents of form directory to:

<drive>:\<Winlink installation directory>\Global Folders\Templates

The default location is C:\RMS Express\Global Folders\Templates but it depends on where did you actually install Winlink.

Installing for Pat

Copy the contents of form directory to ~/.local/share/pat/Standard_Forms/FFWN or put it somewhere else and point Pat at it with a command line option or through the configuration.

Usage: For the net controller

This repository includes a program which will automatically process form replies into a CSV file for you to publish or do statomancy on -- the primary reason for using a form is being able to automate this, and this program does precisely that.

The program works on XML message files exported from RMS Express, or directly on a Pat inbox. Both usages will require some familiarity with the concept of command line.

See ffwn-checkout -h for more detailed help, but the basic gist is like this:

Working with Winlink Express or WoAD

WoAD mail export format is the same as RMS Winlink, so files exported from WoAD can be processed the same way, which is one of the reasons we're using an export file at all. (The other reason is that the structure of RMS Express mailboxes is not documented, while export files are at least known to be stable.)

Using Termux and the executable built for Raspberry, you can process checkin messages on Android, without involving a PC at all.

1. Select all the check-in messages in your inbox.
2. Export them as an XML file.
3. Invoke ffwn-checkout like so:

ffwn-checkout.exe rms <file.xml>

Where file.xml is the file you exported.

This will produce an output.csv file containing all data from the messages. If any message contains data that can't be parsed, the program will print its ID and continue, so you can then deal with the offending message manually.

Working with Pat

Assuming the messages are still in your inbox, and the inbox contains no messages from prior checkins, you just run it like this:

ffwn-checkout pat <your callsign>

Otherwise you need to clean up the inbox so that it does not contain messages with the subject FFWN that should not be processed. (All other messages will be ignored.)

Just like when processing an XML file export, messages that cannot be parsed will report their message IDs so you can deal with them manually.

Installation and compilation

This is a Go program, so this should be easy enough, provided you have a working Go 1.20 or later installation:

go install github.com/Mihara/ffwn@latest

But otherwise you can just take a binary file from the latest release and put it wherever you like.

License

This program and form are released under the terms of WTFPL2.