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Development Info

I've released three tools related to this project under the GPL.

All three utilities build on linux and on windows. System requirements are as follows:

Linux/Cygwin:

Windows:

If you're just trying to convert a new question pool for PalmVE and you're running windows then you can download a prebuilt version of pveconv here, if you're using linux you'll need to download the source and build it. A prebuilt is also available for Win32.

To process a text file pool into a PDB file for PalmVE, run:

pveconv -Tp ./file.txt

This will generate the PDB and the figure PDB if any figures are referenced (and you have the PNGs in the graphics directory). You may need to set a graphics directory with -g if you aren't using my directory tree so that it can find the PNGs.

If you're trying to go to XML, use -Tx and -Xp to go from XML to PDB. The makefiles in the distribution convert the text into XML and the XML into PDB, thus, it is a two pass process.

pvecol is the tool to use to change XML into ARRL review question or test template PDB files. If you want to make an ARRL review question PDB, model it after the existing one for the extra class manual and you shouldn't have any trouble. Invoke pvecol as such:

pvecol -a ./file.xml

To make generic test template PDBs, omit the -a. The XML is the same except that you should not use category tags. They'll be ignored if you do.

Get the source tarballs here (this includes the pool text files and image PNGs):

palmve-tools-0.9.6.tgz

The source is setup with autoconf, but it does not use automake. It might build okay on anything with a gcc, but I've only tried it on linux and cygwin. Run ./configure and make as usual, note that there is no install make target. The binaries get put into ./bin and the data into ./data/pools and ./data/collections.

To build release versions run - make release=1 - release and debug versions of everything can live in the same tree.

If you're using windows there's a VC7 (VS.NET) solution file in the src subfolder. I don't use VC6 any longer so I can't reasonably keep up .dsp/.dsw files for them. Sorry. Cygwin builds should work, though you may find a C++-ism with the expat header file and the XML_Status enum. If it errors out here, move the enum above the initial reference.

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