Michael Black wrote:
Ken Scharf ) writes:

For those hams running linux, I've found I can read
the ARRL QEX and QST View cd roms under linux using either
the Gimp or Open Office writer. These cdroms are scanned
images in tiff or jpg formats which import into either program.
By importing into an OO text document I can convert the articles
into PDF files and print double sided to my printer for
hard copy.

I started looking at writing a program to search the QST view
database found on the disks. The database on the disks up to
1990 (not sure about the 1995 disk) is an ascii representation
of a 3 table SQL database so I can create a MySQL, Posgres, or
similar SQL database to search. The QEX disk has a binary database
of which some sections are readable under vi as text that also appear
to be a set of SQL tables, so extraction of useful data may be
possible here as well. If I could find documention on performing
'macro' commands on a running OO session from another program I could
use OO to build pdf files from a search application (you can do this
under windows using VB script to control a word session).

The QST view database is somewhat incomplete as the final pages
of an article are not referenced in the database and you have to
manually hunt for them, even if you use the windows software.
QEX mostly kept the articles contiguous.


Have you just started playing with this?

Because someone did write about their experiences years back, at
least I think they had had success with those CDROMs under Linux.
I've been meaning to go digging to try to find the post or posts,
because now that I have a computer with a CDROM drive, obviously
those QSTs on CDROM become tempting. And I've never had Windows
running here.

Michael VE2BVW

I've been looking at this for awhile, but havn't yet written
any code. Havn't yet figured out which SQL database to use,
but there is an embedded open source implementation (name escapes
me at the moment) that is easier to use then MySql or Postgres
which doesn't require the server to be installed. Converting
the QST view database would require a simple C program to read
and parse the ascii file into three tables, then just write
some simple SQL searches to retrieve the data.
The hard part is to access OO write via backdoor scripts to
create a document to read or print from the images on the cdrom.
Of course that part can be done by hand once you have the list
of file names.
I hope to find time to sit down and write the code to do the
first part, maybe someone familar with the backends of OO can
help me with the second part.