[Xastir-Dev] Short list, stable release, then Xastir-2 development?

[Curt Mills, WE7U]

On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, J. Lance Cotton wrote:

> Curt Mills wrote:
> > 1) GPSMan integration (DONE!).  Needs testing by other users.
>
> I guess this is new to me. I'll do some testing on this with my Garmin eTrex
> models.

It's new to everybody!  I've been talking to the author on and off
for six months or more, and he added command-line mode and wrote
gpsmanshp.so based on my requests, so he deserves a lot of thanks
for doing that!  He released GPSMan 6.0 last friday, and I finished
putting it into the Xastir code yesterday.  It's cool though.  I've
been playing with a pre-release version of GPSMan for quite a while.
I've only tried it with a Garmin GPS-II+ so far.


> > 3) RELAY digipeat tested for both AX.25 and serial KISS interfaces.
> > Someone please test RELAY digipeat with serial KISS interfaces.  I
> > think Olivier and one other are testing with AX.25 interfaces.
>
> I can also test this, but I will say that I enabled it recently and as soon as
> a relay-able packet came in, Xastir popped up an error about a hard fail on
> the AX.25 device, invalid callsign of some sort (I can get the exact error
> message when I'm at home this evening).

I believe that Olivier just fixed that little problem.  Try it again
and let us know.


> My thoughts are that for starters, just the APRS data points received. It
> might be helpful to ask Steve Dimse what his database fields are, since he has
> plenty of experience in a SQL database of APRS data.

We have an Xastir user that has a bit of experience there as well
don't we?  James?


> Map data can come later. I foresee some utility program that could take the
> various vector map formats and 'convert and insert' them into the map database
> as a common format. Maybe the 'map loader' can even have a gui later on that
> would allow pick-and-choose of shapefile layers to import. (of course raster
> maps need to be handled as well.)

Check out PostGIS!!!  It already has Shapefile->PostgreSQL
translators in both directions.  Putting our Shapefile maps into
PostgreSQL is the smallest of our problems and I'm going to ignore
the mapping portion for now anyway.


> There needs to be a clear distinction from the start of the gui vs. the
> backend data collection. Might as well decide now (or near now) where to split
> the various functions so that there are no grey areas later.

Yep!  I have my ideas.  Lets hear from everybody on this issue.
It's an important one.


> Even the backend
> could be made up of several programs, but the first step might best be a
> 'collect the data from the interfaces and insert it in a common format into
> the database' kind of thinking.

That's the part I'm starting to collect code snippets for and
working on.  The final table formats are up for grabs, but I figured
I'd get a start putting in raw packets and combining our interface
code with the database interface code in order to create the daemon.
We can tweak it from there into the final configuration.


> One question is regarding I-Gating. I-Gating of data should work on the
> incoming (and outgoing) stream. Do we get the stream by repeatedly (at
> regular, short intervals) querying the database for all packets since the last
> query? Do we put the igate code in the 'db loader' program so it has direct
> access to the streams and only use db queries for dupe checking?

There are ways of having the database notify our C-code when certain
triggers are seen.  The database/interface daemon could do this
stuff automatically, without an Xastir GUI client connected at all.
The database/interface daemon can do the dupe-checking as well.  In
fact, we could leave the dupe-checking portion in the interface code
for now until we figured out the perfect method to have the database
do it for us automatically.

-- 
Curt Mills, WE7U                    hacker_NO_SPAM_ at tc.fluke.com
Senior Methods Engineer/SysAdmin
"Lotto:    A tax on people who are bad at math!"
"Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates!" -- WE7U
"The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"