This program analyses and displays on-line charges derived from the Voyager
Internet Suite. It also caters for discounts.
While it is intended to be used in conjunction with !Voyager, it could no doubt
be adapted to parse similar dial-up log files in other communications suites.
This updated version has the facility to analyse any DialLog file, from
Voyager's home directory, dropped into its window. The analysis is frequently
revealing - showing rather a lot of wasted money on aborted and crashed calls.
There is a "Threshold" variable which can be set individually, below which
any call is deemed 'wasted'. This may happen for example if a 'Quickfetch'
finds the news fetcher failing, with a red LED showing. Most calls less than 30 seconds (including the 'startup' time of 13 seconds) are probably wasted.
'No Carrier', and any other occasions where the server answers the call
and the logon procedure fails, are also treated as 'wasted'.
I think have now got all the procedures for calculating minimum times and
charges correct; and also the way BT applies discounts. I had been erring on
the side of generosity...
You can also extract all calls costing more than 40p to compare with your
telephone bill which has a similar listing.
Please feel free to alter the way I have registered the various failures in
the program: the BASIC is reasonably self-explanatory.
The 'startup' time appears to have been constant over the various versions
of Voyager, but could easily be altered in the RunImage file.
Various errors have come to light and I hope all are now corrected. Thank you
to various correspondents... I have changed the parse procedure to allow for
different lengths of phone numbers too, after the change to the 0645 number.
A wonderfully obscure error has also been discovered; an error was given for a
call which started exactly on a boundary... this has also been corrected.
For this, and for finding a basic error in the 'Summer Saver' discount
calculations where these crossed a call-charge boundary, I would like to
thank Rosemary Miskin. Mike Lewis also discovered errors when the program
is faced with "No dial tone" entries: this also uncovered other mistakes
in my parsing procedure. I hadn't come across the "No dial tone" or "no
carrier" entries before. "No dial tone" is ignored in the totals (and not
charged for), "No carrier" and other server failures are charged at the
minimum rate, as is any crashed call, despite the fact that it may have been
longer than minimum: however, there is no means of measuring this.
Somewhere along the upgrades, the DialLog file seems to have changed its header.
The first two lines of the file need to start with "Voyager..." underlined with
"~~~~~~~...". If they are not like this, I suggest you edit the file.
If the DialLog file reaches 1000 lines, the program complains. It's about time
you started a fresh file... perhaps when you pay the phone bill. I use Zap to
edit the files into BTs charging periods. It's reassuring (or not...) to see
