[chirp_users] Local OS Settings and CHIRP

[Dan Smith]

> Might be a beginner?s guide or a help file within the program could
> help to reduce the efforts in climbing up the learning curve ?
> (based on my experience I could offer some limited help).

There's not really any documentation at this point.  CHIRP is still
relatively new and people *seem* to be able to figure it out for the
most part.

I don't really have time to write any formal documentation,
unfortunately.  However, the web site is a wiki that allows people
like you to contribute content.  So, if you'd like to create a page
(or set of pages) describing some of your experience and tips for
beginners, that would be great!

> 1. Excel uses the local settings of the OS. Therefore xxx.csv ?
> files created by the export of an xxx.img-files to a xxx.csv cannot
> be re-opened again by CHIRP once they have been processed and
> eventually modified in Excel and saved there again as xxx.csv or
> yyy.csv Reason is that the local settings in the OS (here German
> instead of English (USA)) create semicolons (;) instead of commas
> (,) as separator, don?t use a dot (.) but a comma (,) for the
> decimal information etc. . I have tried to modify the file by an
> editor using search and replace but the editor doesn?t save the
> result in a way CHIRP would finally process.

Hmm, well, it should import after that, unless the formatting was
broken in some way.  If you'd like to send me the CSV that you're
trying to import (after fixing it with the editor) I can try to
identify what was killing it.

> It would be nice if the program could work in a non-English
> environment as well.

Well, a CSV file is a *Comma* Separated Values file.  Such a file
depends on commas separating the fields, which means they can't be
used in numbers.

I suppose I could add a TSV (tab separated values) variant that would
be tolerant of changing commas to periods.  Please file a tracker item
for this so I don't forget and I'll try to get to it after I release
0.1.9.

> 2. After a successful export and import of xxx.csv under English
> local settings I have tried to do the same with xxx.chirp. This
> failed, however, with the error notice ?Unable to load schema?. At
> the moment I don?t know why this happens.

Can you send me the debug.log file after you try that import?

> 3. I have imported the xxx.csv into Excel (with English settings),
> saved it as xxx_1.csv and tried to import or open the saved file in
> CHIRP. Both failed with the error notice list index out of range. I
> assume there is something I have to set in Excel but unfortunately I
> don?t know what to do here. Might be it?s somehow related to my
> Excel version but not sure.

This is probably because Excel is doing a number conversion on one of
the values that is making it no longer valid.  If you send me the
debug.log file when trying to do this, I'll determine what it's
tripping up on.

Thanks!

-- 
Dan Smith
dsmith#danplanet.com, s/#/@/
www.danplanet.com
KK7DS