h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Airline call signs - A689916
Author: sidsaucer - U187806

This entry indicates some of the more colourful, humourous and less obvious call-signs used by pilots as they communicate with air traffic controllers and their company's outposts. It is updated to 2001 and will be updated annually hereafter.

There's a lot of information there. However, I have no idea what any of it means. Maybe a little more of an introduction for those of us who don't know what's being said here would be useful.

Obviuosly, lt was a extensive research. But H'm well to the Research Dept.
The Kid

Hi,

I'm confused too. Maybe it belongs in a table (ask us about GML if you're not familiar with it). I suspect...

Code Operator Country

...are the three headings.

But the first one doesn't fit the format, because the three letter code you mention in the intro, isn't there.

ROYAL NEW ZEALAND AIR FORCE Call-sign: Kiwi NEW ZEALAND


And maybe there are additional comments in the second, operator, column?

AAD | AERO AVIATION CENTRE Call-sign: Sunrise | CANADA

AAL | AMERICAN AIRLINES Turboprops' call-sign: Eagle Flight | USA


Awu.

You're quite correct, I don't know the three letter code used by the RNZAF, but I thought their call-sign too entertaining to ignore. The data is drawn from a database, but I'm not convinced that a tabular format would help readers of h2g2. If the alternative (GML?) table took account of the lengthy names of some aircraft operators and some countries, then it would be uncomfortably wide and waste everybody's time scrolling left and right. Computer screens often seem to compress fonts in tables in a desperate attempt to cope with their width. By presenting the airline name and country in UPPER CASE I think this helps the call-sign to be easily distinguished and allows the font to remain user-friendly.

If you know some reasonably legible tables in h2g2, perhaps you could point them out to me? Thanks for your interest.

Hey Sidsaucer, how're you doing? This is just a gentle nudge to see if you can reformat your entry so that the upper case caps are made lower case and that the list is put into a table. The reason I'm asking you to do this is that it's loads of work for a sub to do - a bit unfair, really to get them to do it all. Anyway, we'd really appreciate it if you'd give this a go, get back to us when it's ready and then we can get it in to the Edited Guide.

Many thanks,

Sam.

i like it, the only thing is, is that it absolutely needs more organization, tables, headings, i dont know, but it is very hard to read it as it is. thanks

galen

The information is extracted from a much larger database and the fonts are exactly as they appear in that database. I am uncertain why readers find upper case lettering inappropriate. Many airlines present their names in upper case along the fuselage of their aircraft. I agree that the names of countries should ideally be in mixed case but I don't have a spare six weeks in which to alter my database.

sorry if i came off kind of rough, as everyone has said, it is your entry and it may get picked even if you do not change those things, but i felt that that was what it needed, but i should have been less agressive about it

Hello again,

The reason we've asked you to do this, Sidsaucer, is a matter of house style - it's a way of keeping entries uniform throughout the Edited Guide, that's all. Just as the database you've taken this from has a style (all upper case), so do we. It's nothing against your entry - in fact, we really like it.

What you can do is highlight the list, cut and past it into a word document, press SHIFT+F3 (which makes it all lower case) and then SHIFT+F3 again to make the first letter of each word upper case again (and the rest lower case). Then cut and paste that into a text document (like Notepad) and then back paste it back into the guide.

All the best,

Sam.

i agree, the entry really is good, and it does not sound hard to do that, but then if that is not so hard, then why cant a sub do it just as easily. i think that it is more of an issue of that it is not their job to do that sort of thing, oh well... i hope you get that done, soon

Good point, Galen. Let's see what the author Sidsaucer thinks when he gets back to us. Either way, I'm sure we'll get this entry into the Edited Guide soon enough.

yeah, i was hoping to be able to recomend it by tommorow, but i guess not.

I agree, the data would look much better in tabular format.

A bit of massaging this between Excel and Word gets it into tabular format quite quickly, and I reckon I could do the whole list in half an hour or so - and most of that time is finding the exceptional lines that don't conform to the standard format. The main problem is that the html produced by Word is horribly bloated, with all sorts of FONT FACE tags and suchlike. Maybe a decent html editor would allow you to strip these out though?

If the author wants, I can process the list and get it into a table at least...

yes, i was thinking of just doing it, but i do not have the time at present

oh well

I had the same problem with a large table in the VO2 Max entry. I used one of the free HTML tools to produce the table, then stripped out the surplus (like you say, the font overrides, colours, etc.) with an editor using find/replace. A little tedious, but I would say 10-15 minutes' work.
Awu

yeah, but also i get the oppinion, that if it is 10-15 minutes to do, then why is it too much for a Sub?

this entry has been recomended by taliesian(i cant spell the name, sorry)

That's I can't spell Galleon!

In the interests of fellow-researchership, to give the sub-eds a break, and because I can't resist a challenge, ( besides, I was bored! ), I've put this thing into a table, here: A698169. To grab the code, just click here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/test698169

It looks ok in Exploder. Anyone using Netscrape or Oprah have any problems with it?

sidsaucer, you owe me an