Digital QSL cards in Linux

Those looking for a Windows software, checkout PA4M Digital QSL Creator.

I like Linux and uses it as a daily driver for anything other than day job. So when I participated in a contest recently, I thought of sending out digital QSL cards to my contacts. Upon searching online, I found it is possible using Linux. Nothing to be invented. Here is how I went about:

Made sure that the original log for the contest is maintained in spreadsheet and can be exported to a csv file.

Design a QSL card. This needs a little patience. There are templates available online, mostly for Adobe Photoshop. I wanted to create in GIMP and started from scratch. 

While designing the card, I followed the guidelines found here, regarding the card size, so that the same can be printed if necessary.

The template GIMP project I created can be found here.

After the QSL card image was created, I used glabels software (similar to MailMerge in MS Word) to generate individual QSL card images. I used a workflow found here.

The glabels project I used is also available in the github project.

Once the contest log csv is tied to the glabels software, the QSL card images can be saved to a file. This will be a single multi page pdf file.

Now, the pdf file is converted to individual .png files using the following command:

pdftoppm -png output.pdf qslcard

This will create individual files and can be renamed to <callsign>.png using a script.

python rename-qsl-files.py finallog.csv qslcard png

Now all the individual images files are available and it is ready to be sent out to the recipients. The email ids of the stations are fetched from QRZ.com, again using a python script. (QRZ subscription needed to get email id field)

The script is also available in the github location.

That is mostly the workflow. Someday, I will improve the script to get everything done in a single command.

References:

1. https://rsgb.org/main/operating/qsl-bureau/what-is-a-qsl-card/

2. https://github.com/bejoysat/amateurradio/tree/master/qslcard

3. https://oe5lxr.at/automate-your-qsl-card-workflow/