Apologies if this has been asked and answered - I'm still relatively new to Radiomail and Winlink operation.
A number of forms have a "Load Report Data" button - for example the Local Weather Report form has a "Load Local WX Report data" button. Pressing the button opens a file dialog, suggesting there's a way to generate a file of, say, weather data that could auto-populate the form. I have found some Winlink docs that suggest this feature as a way to save repetitive data entry, e.g. callsign and name, but it would be interesting to try something more automated.
Is there documentation somewhere in the Winlink world on how to create and use such files? I've tried filling in a form and save the data, and it looks like a JSON object (though some Winink docs suggests it's an XML payload.) Are these documented somewhere for the standard forms?
The load/save function is a mechanism forms use to serialize their data. The way I understand it is that it's primarily used by the user filling the form, and then saving it as JSON prior to submitting it. This allows the user to re-load a "draft" version, modify few things and submit it again. If you view the source of the form, you will see a javascript method where this operation takes place. Typically, it will look for all form fields and simply dump their values. As far as I know, there is no documentation for this as it is specific to a form and they could do whatever they want in that process.
The XML you're referring to is the way the form is serialized and attached as a payload to the email. During that process, some variable substitution occur to fill in things like callsign, time and location data. There is some documentation for this on the winlink.org site.