[Xastir-dev] N/S and E/W bit

[Bob Bruninga]

N/S & E/W and Z/z bits:

It appears that APRSdos and Kenwoods are the only ones so far that are
case insensitive to the N/S and E/W indicators.

FINDU, javAPRS, Xastir, Pmap are case sensitive and ignore L/C packets.

WinAPRS, UIview are unknown..

Since the beginning I had always thought that I had these three bits
in reserve for any later ideas we came up with...  But apparently not.

Independent of this present ACTIVITY BIT idea, I would like to ask all
authors to consider this proposal for APRS SPEC adoption:

1) Revise your code starting now to be case insensitive to these 3
bytes:  N/S and E/W and the Time Zone character "Z/z"

2) Then at some agreed future date, and after much deliberation, we can
decide how best to standardize the use of these 3 bits (if needed).

But we must get code to accept it now for future backwards compatibility.
Besides this ACTIVE bit, I have also wanted a PRIORITY bit so that we
could differentiate between packets that claim priority and those that
accept being routine...  But I dont want to argue those now.

I only ask that we change code now to accept EITHER CASE for the N/S, E/W
and z/Z bytes so that we have 3 available bits in the spec for future use.

Share this with other authors, but not on the APRSSIG.  Just too many
clueless people there...

If we can get agreement among all authors, then we can consider making it
a formal change to the spec.

de WB4APR, Bob