QST Browser User's Manual
version 0.15
Kok Chen, W7AY
[w7ay (at)
arrl.net]
Last updated: Sept 10, 2007
NOTE: As of 2008, the ARRL has started to discontinue selling QST View CD-ROMS. The CD-ROMS are still available from the original publisher (Radio Era Archives, http://www.radioera.com/QST-VIEW.asp) and Radio Era's distributors.
Introduction
QST Browser is a Mac OS X application for searching
and viewing archives from the ARRL CD-ROMs. The
application works with the following publications:
QST View CD-ROM
from 1915 through 2004,
QEX Collection from 1981 through 1998,
NCJ Collection from 1973 through 1998,
ham radio Magazine CD-ROM set from 1968 through
1990,
Communications Quarterly CD-ROM from 1990
through 1999.
Please note that there is limited search functionality when QST Browser is used with the 2000-2004 QST View CD-ROM set. The QST View sets that are released from 2004 on uses a Microsoft cabinet file compression scheme for the database file and there is no MacOS X system support to decompress it.
Up until 1994, the QST View database were not compressed. The database used for the CD-ROMs that are created between 1995 and 2000 (this includes QST View 1995-1999, the QEX Collection, the Communications Quarterly, and the ham radio Magazine) uses ZIP compression and the files are decompressed in QST Browser with the Mac OS X BOMArchiveHelper (this is the same application that Mac OS X uses to decompress Disk Images (.dmg files).
System Requirements
QST Browser uses Mac OS X's Core Data and requires at least Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) to function.
Files
When you install QST Browser, in addition to installing the program itself into /Applications, the installer also places a folder called "QST Browser" into the /Library/Application Support folder to save the database file for each publication.
Initially, the files will be very small since you will be starting with an empty database, but they will grow as you update your database with the discs that you own. There is a sub-folder in QST Browser's Applications Support folder named "Empty database." This contains the initial empty database. If at any time you feel that you need to clear one of the databases, simply remove the database (with "sql" file extensions) -- the next time you use QST Browser for that periodical, it will make a copy of an empty database from the one that is found in the "Empty database" folder. If you erase the empty database by mistake, simply reinstall QST Browser.
When you use QST Browser, a preference file will be created for you in your home folder's Library/Preferences named w7ay.QST Browser.plist. This is where your hard drive preferences are kept.