Thank you for posting a comment on HHD.

Indeed editing ADIF files is reasonably easy to do and your point is valid. However, the point of the article is not if ADIF files can be edited to make PH and DIG Field Day compliant mode values. The point is the ADIF specification does not support PH and DIG as valid modes. Thus, ADIF cannot capture Field Day QSO data properly. Also eQSL, if eQSL is ADIF compliant, is not compatible with Field Day data.

As for the second comment about logging programs needing to change to output the appropriate mode based on the contest… yes they should and probably already do despite this breaking the ADIF rules.

For example, N3FJP Field Day software will generate an ADIF file with SSB (if you accept the option it pops up), CW and DIG in the mode field. The DIG mode does not exist in ADIF. However, Field Day only knows DIG in its rules therefore so does N3FJP Field Day logging software. Since the Field Day rules only require the mode to be Phone, CW or Digital, and since Field Day, like most contests, have set these rules long before computers came on the scene, it is the computer and its related attempts at standardization that have the task to accommodate the contest specifics… not the other way around.

This small problem of Field Day exchange data incompatibility would be eliminated if ADIF added PH and DIG to the modes.

Should be like…
<mode:3>SSB to <mode:2>PH
<mode:2>FM to <mode:2>PH

<mode:4>RTTY to <mode:3>DIG (or whatever it should be)
<mode:5>PSK31 to <mode:3>DIG

Something like:
SSB to PH
FM to PH

RTTY to DIG (or whatever it should be)
PSK31 to DIG

And besides the ADIF standard handling it, all the logging programs would need to change to output the appropriate mode based on the contest.