Set Program Options
Click 'Config > Set Program Options' to open the 'Options' window, which allows you to alter and save a number of different program-options for use between sessions. The Options window has a number of different tabs that open different option-pages:
User Details, Mapping, Markers 1, Markers 2, Markers 3, Bands, Overlay Map, World Map, Colors, Logs, Lists, Export.
User Details
The 'User Details' options-tab is where you enter your own station details: Callsign, Latitude, and Longitude. These details are then used as a base to perform various program calculations, such as distance and bearing, or anything that needs your Home Position. The 'Callsign' value is used as the label for any Markers that feature your callsign, such as when clicking 'Markers > Add a Marker for the Home Position'. The Callsign is also used for the operator's callsign when exporting a log to ADIF, as when a log is imported, the operator's callsign is not saved in a log database.
Mapping
The 'Mapping' options-tab sets options to do with the Online and Overlay Maps. The 'Map Provider' relates to the company that provides the background maps for the Online Mapping tab-page. Not all of them work all of the time, so you must experiment to see which you like best and which is the most reliable. Personally, I tend to stick with 'Bing'. You can also set whether to show the Online Map scale-bar or not, and set the Transparency used when filling polygons, such as Counties, Grid Locators, or IOTA bounding-boxes.
For both Online and Overlay Maps, you can also set the Distance Units that are used for distance calculations, and choose whether or not to show the moving label that follows the Mouse when mouse-over functions are valid.
Markers 1, and 2
The two 'Markers' options-tabs are the place to select the type of Marker that will be used for different entities, including Browse and Search returns. There are 37 different types and colors of marker available', plus 16 small 'box markers'.
If you choose a Box Marker, please see the 'Box Markers' tab to select color and size.
Box Markers
The 'Box Markers' options-tab configures the 16 'Box Markers', which are simple colored squares, sized 4x4 to 12x12 pixels. All box-markers are the same size. They are ideal for plotting dense datasets, like a large callsign list.
Band Markers
The 'Bands' options-tab is where you can choose which marker is used to represent each band when, for instance, plotting log QSOs on the maps. There are 6 different band-markers available. The program can cope with a log with up to 12 different bands in it, so Bands 7-12 use the same markers as Bands 1-6. You can see a list of the bands for each log, and the reference-number that has been assigned to each, by looking at the 'Log Summary' tab-page in the central program area, or by clicking 'Main Log > Plot Calls by Band' and 'Auxiliary Log > Plot Calls by Band' on the upper Menu-Bar.
Overlay Map
The 'Overlay Map' options-tab is where you choose the default overlays that are shown whenever a different Overlay Map is chosen from the 49 different available maps: 2 overview maps at 1:20,000,000 scale and 47 maps at 1:2,000,000 scale.
Select the required Background Overlay with the dropdown-selector, and any of the optional 16 foreground overlays with the checkboxes.
If we are showing the OverView or the Alaska map, the Backgrounds have a 'Lights' layer instead of a 'Counties and Municipal Regions' layer, whilst the Foregrounds substitute 'Hams' for 'Zipcode', and 'LatLon 5 degree' for 'Minor Town'.
You can also choose which Overlay Map will show when the program opens: either the map that contains your User Position (see 'User Details' above), or the map that was last used when the program previously closed.
World and Great Circle Map
The 'World and Great Circle Map' options-tab sets the different options for the World Map and the Great Circle Maps.
First, you can select the default background image from a list of 'Bathy Grey Earth', 'Grass Etopo 2', 'Tp-SfHm-GlHwm', 'Grass Terrain', 'Blue Marble', 'Gray Earth', 'Natural Earth 1', 'Natural Earth 2', 'TM BlueGreen', 'Ice Relief', 'Blue Marble Bathy', 'Dark Earth', 'GOM Mapper', 'Wikipedia 1', 'Yellow Earth', 'Colored Countries'.
Next, you can set the Default Gray-Line Transparency (0-100) and Gray-Line Terminator Width (0-20) for both maps. I suggest that you experiment to choose the settings that suit you the best.
For the World Map, you can set different colors and fonts for each of the eleven Overlays on each of the sixteen Background maps, but that is not done here. To change them, go to the main program window and view the World Map, then click 'Config > Set World Map Colors/Fonts'. This is done there rather than in the main Options window so that you can see the World Map as you change the colors and fonts.
To change the color used for the solid-color grayline on the World Map and Great Circle Map, or to change the different circle colors on the Great Circle Map, just click the colored boxes on the World Map or Great Circle Map tab-pages. A Color-Dialog will open. You can select any of the colors that it shows, or click the 'Define Custom Colors' button where you can create your own colors by clicking the color chart and adjacent dark/light slider, or by entering values in the HSV or RGB boxes. You can save separate colors for grayline, lat/lon circles, and radial lines for each of the sixteen Background maps.
Colors
The 'Colors' options-tab lets you change a variety of colors that are used in the program. Colors that can be changed are listed in the 'Colors' tab-page. To change a color, click the colored square. A Color-Dialog will open. You can select any of the colors that it shows, or click the 'Define Custom Colors' button where you can create your own colors by clicking the color chart and adjacent dark/light slider, or by entering values in the HSV or RGB boxes.
Logs
The 'Logs' options-tab sets a number of default options that are used when you load a Cabrillo or ADIF log-file to the Main or Auxiliary Log databases. These options can be changed during the actual log-load process, but it is handy if the settings that you normally use are already selected. The options are:
Include all none-geocoded QSOs - This option will import any QSOs that the program cannot find a position for.
Include any Exchanges - There are 2 options for exchanges, as the program organises contest-exchanges into 2 database fields. RST is included as an exchange item.
Calculate Grid Locators from Position - Whilst loading the log, this option will calculate the Grid Locators from an available position.
There is also the facility to choose how you open logs: Last Used Path, or specified Path. You can specify a path by clicking the 'Select Specified Path' button.
Lists
This refers to the lists that you might wish to plot. You can choose how you open lists: Last Used Path, or specified Path. You can specify a path by clicking the 'Select Specified Path' button.
Export
The 'Export' options-tab let you choose the way that an exported log or data table will be formatted when it is saved as a CSV or text file.
You can select whether the data in each column is enclosed with different inverted commas, or none.
You can choose which character is used to separate each column in the table, though I should point out that no check is made to see whether your table already contains the same character as has been chosen as the column-separator character. If in doubt, choose a separator character that is unlikely to already be present in the data, such as the 'Pipe' character: '|'.
You can also choose to add the column-names as the first row in the table: this is very useful when importing to some database applications, but not all.
At the bottom of the Options page are buttons for:
Save All - Saves all changes to all tabs and closes the Options window.
Default on Current Tab - Resets all values for the tab that is currently showing to default. It does not close the Options window.
Reset on Current Tab - Resets all changes made for the tab that is currently showing. It does not close the Options window.
Cancel All - Abandons all changes and closes the Options window.