Morse Runner Community Edition

Click here to install the latest release.

Welcome

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.

Goals

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.

How can I help?

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.

Roadmap

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.

Roadmap - Now, Next, and Future

Now - Spring 2024 (Apr-Jun)

Projects we are currently working on...

• [ ] GUI Enhancement Discussions - The team will evaluate the GUI for ergonomic enhancements. Perhaps build a prototype to collect useability feedback from project advocates and users.

• [ ] 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.

• [ ] ARRL Field Day support announcement - We would like to figure out how to announce MRCE's support for ARRL Field Day. This contest was the main focus from two years ago and we want to be sure that users are aware of this training opportunity in time for FD 2024.

• [ ] Focus on Quality - Address important quality issues as they are reported.

Next - 2nd half 2024

Projects that we'll work on next (as time permits)...

• [ ] Developer on-boarding - Help new developers get up to speed with compiling and pushing to the project.

• [ ] Merge selected features and bug fixes - (As time permits...) Identify and integrate features from other MR branches into the main release branch.

• [ ] ARRL Sweepstakes Contest development - As time permits, continue development work on ARRL Sweepstakes CW Contest. This contest has a complex exchange, so the implementation is taking longer than expected.

• [ ] 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.

• [ ] Additional contests - Based on community input, we will consider adding a few more contests for the fall contesting season.

Future

Projects that we'll work on later...

• [ ] Developer on-boarding - Help other developers get up to speed with compiling and pushing to the project.

• [ ] 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.

• [ ] 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.

• [ ] SO2R Investigation - Investigate whether it is possible to support SO2R using MRCE. Perhaps build a prototype for evaluation and user feedback and requirements.

• [ ] 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.

• [ ] 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.

• [ ] 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.

• [ ] 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?

• [ ] 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.

• [ ] 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?

• [ ] Add ARRL Sweepstakes - Consider adding ARRL Sweepstakes; however this one might be a little harder since it has a complex exchange. (This is on hold for now due to resources and complexity of exchange. w7sst, Oct 12, 2022)

Roadmap - Completed

Complete - Spring 2022 (Apr-June)

• [x] 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.

Complete - Summer 2022 (July-Sept)

• [x] 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.

• [x] 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.

• [x] 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.

• [x] 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.

• [x] 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.

Complete - Fall 2022 (Oct-Dec)

• [x] 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.

• [x] 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).

• [x] 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.

• [x] Add CQ WW Contest - simple contest with RST and CQ-Zone. Release 1.81.

• [x] Add ARRL DX Contest - international contest with RST and State/Province (US & Canada) or RST and Power (DX Stations). Release 1.82.

Complete - Winter 2023 (Jan-Mar)

Release 1.83...

• [x] 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.

• [x] Add JARL All Japan and ACAG contests - These contests are being implemented by JR8PPG. Thank you!

Complete - Winter 2024 (Apr '23 - Mar '24)

Release 1.84...

• [x] Add IARU HF Championship Contest - Implement support for the upcoming IARU HF Championship Contest.

• [x] Improve CQ WPX Contest - Improved serial number generation and replaced the NR Digits menu with Serial NR menu.

• [x] 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.

• [x] Quality improvements.

History

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.

Morse Runner Release History

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.

To Do

• [x] 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.