At 15:36 03 September 2010, Tim Newport-Peace wrote:

Validating traces is still a valid requirement so the tools to do so
need
to keep up with times.

Nick H

It has always been the case that older products have "Grandfathers
Rights". So there does not seem to be a way of forcing a manufacturer
to
change or update while the product conforms to the Specification as it
was when the product received approval.

Even then, if there was a legitimate case for making a manufacturer
change, the only weapon IGC has is the threat to withdraw approval, and
if IGC were to withdraw an approval, there would be a lot of squealing
from the users.

What would you have IGC do?



OK, valid points :-)

I should read the doc more closely before starting to type ....

I just checked the doc again and it does say

1) For new recorders the IGC Shell DLL option is mandatory
2) The provision of these Windows-based DLLs became mandatory on 1 July
2004. This is to allow for problems encountered running the non-Windows
'Short DOS programs' on some PCs.
3) For existing recorders it shall be produced by 1 July 2004

so it seems pretty clear.

As you say if a manufacturer doesn't comply for older exisitng recorders
then going down the route of withdrawing an approval isn't really
practical.


I just checked the IGC Shell and DLLsfrom the IGC web site on a 64-bit
Windows 7 system and it seems absolutely fine at validating traces,
presumably to be expected as it supports the Win32 APIs.


Nick H