[Xastir-Dev] Messaging interface...

[Mark Dieterich]

Folks,

I finally have my head above the waterline again, so I thought I would 
take a minute and follow up on Curts suggestion.  I'd like to start a 
dicussion/design thread on how we can make the message part of xastir 
better.  The only other APRS programs I've played with have been APRS-CE 
and WinAPRS.  Here are some suggestions I have, from my experience with 
those interfaces and personal wishlish items:

- Get ride of the message popups.  These always seem to come up at the 
most unfortunate times.

- Have all messages listed in one window.  Among things listed, include:
   * current status (could be color coded or field with different
     qualifiers).  Status could include:
       - oustanding ack: still in the process of sending
       - acked
       - delayed: message retries have exceeded some retry limit after
         which the message is marked delayed.  Xastir will try sending
         the message again, if it sees packets from that station
       - canceled
       - reply: this message has been acked and is a reply to a
         message you received
   * list station you are sending the message two
   * obviously, the message content
   * list the number of retries/delayed/timeout

- Flexible filtering options:
   * I like the distance filtering and would certainly keep it.  This is
     something WinAPRS didn't have!
   * I'd like to be able to filter out messages to/from all of my
     stations.  We could just filter on the base callsign, i.e. N2PGD and
     I would see messages to/from N2PGD, N2PGD-9, and N2PGD-15
   * I'd like to be able to filter out messages to/from only this
     particular station.  This would mean filterin on the station
     callsign, i.e. N2PGD-9
   * custom filtering where we allow the user to put in regexp for
     filtering

- Message logging:  I'd be interested in having the ability to log three 
different kinds of messages:
   * all messages
   * messages to/from all my stations
   * messages to/from only this particular station

- Viewing messages via thread:  I haven't come up with a completely 
success method for determining a message thread, perhaps a combination 
of time and station calls?  Even if it only grouped them by to/from 
callsign groups, that would be handy.

- Message printing:  This probably sounds like a crazy idea to some, but 
could be really handy in the case of ECOM.  It would be good to have 
them formatted in some nice way, with origination info, time, date, etc. 
  I'd like to see a few different priting modes:
   * The ability to highlight a single message and print it
   * The ability to highlight a message thread and print it
   * Every message gets sent to the printer

- NTS messaging.  WinAPRS presents the user with an NTS message window. 
  It then takes this window, breaks it into various APRS messages and 
sends them off.  If WinAPRS receives such a group of messages, it 
recombines it into an NTS message format and presents it as an NTS 
message to the user.  Again, this would be really handy in an ECOM 
situation.

So what do people think, any of these good ideas?  I'm sure there are 
some more/better ideas out there.

73,

Mark