SOLVED: How to send a Winlink form with pat

[Wiley Sanders]

Much to my amazement, I was able to check in to today's Winlink Thursday, by sending the winlink check in form via pat over telnet. Here's what I did:

1. Get pat over telnet to work. I will not go into this now. It is a separate subject.
2. Unzip the Standard_Forms.zip available online. Instructions are in the ARC-EmComm-Training group on groups.io, possibly elsewhere.
3. Open the URL file:///<wherever you unzipped the forms to>/GENERAL%20Forms/Winlink_Check_In_Initial.html and fill out the form.
4. Click the "Save Check In Data" button and save the data using the file name suggested by the HTML form. I didn't seem to have much choice over where the file ended up; it was placed in /tmp, the same directory in which I unzipped the zip archive.
5. You will get a file, in my case named 'Winlink Check-in 2021-04-08 15_49.txt'.
6. "Cat" (in linux) or display this file in an editor and copy and paste into the pat http composer. Be sure the line "Msg:" is in the first line of the email body.
7. Enter recipients, and enter a subject with the text: "Express Check In YOURCALL-YOUR LOCATION SPACES OK"
8. I also attached the 'Winlink Check-in 2021-04-08 15_49.txt' as a standard MIME email attachment. Pat can handle MIME attachments but cannot attach Winlink form data, whatever that is.
9. Success! It is possible to send the Winlink forms with pat, without using Winlink Express. Certainly I would not foist this on emcomm beginners, but I do not have access to a Windows OS at home. We have a Windows PC in our radio room , but the radio room is off limits for the time being.

For further handling by the recipient, upon receiving the email with the 'Winlink Check-in 2021-04-08 15_49.txt' attachment., the recipient would download the attachment and then load it into the Winlink_Check_In_Viewer HTML form. From there, do whatever is needed.

How the Winlink forms work in WLE is still a mystery to me and I have not been able to find out much. When attached using Winlink Express the form data ends up in the message body in a "Field: Data" format, and also in the message body encapsulated in XML. I don't think WLE itselfs attaches files as MIME attachments, but can handle MIME formatted mail as far as I know. The HTML forms handle data import and export with Javascipt.

Wiley Sanders KF6IIU

ARC NCCR Program Lead

Walnut Creek, CA

 

[Michael LaBlanc]

Wiley,

Excellent timely solution - thank you!

Kind regards,

Mike

KC2EHR

[rich d]

Necessity is the Mother of Invention!

Rich KN6BDH

[Wiley Sanders]

I need to post a message to clarify that I am not sure why my method worked. My position report was received, but I think it required manual processing and would not have "popped up" in WLE as a form. I asked the exercise organizers how my attachment was processed, whether manually or automated, but did not receive a reply. I would hesitate to recommend this procedure for the ARE/ARC Winlink exercise so as to minimize the amount of manual form processing they might feel obligated to do. 

The method could certainly be further refined but the forthcoming WLE-forms-compatible version of pat will render it moot. WLE does handle the JSON data saved by the form, but it takes the JSON data, further encapsulates it in XML, and sends the JSON data in the body of the message and the XML as a MIME-attachment.

w

[Ed Fardos]

VA7DAP reports,

*** RMS Relay Secure login required: KM6LYW - Disconnecting (127.0.0.1)
2021/05/04 07:41:46 Exchange failed: RMS Relay Secure login required: KM6LYW - Disconnecting (127.0.0.1)


Pat v0.10.0 (601f6d3) linux/amd64 - go1.15.1



This was a new one to me this morning... am i hopelessly out of date?