[Xastir-dev] possible xastir software engineering course project

[Jason KG4WSV]

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 5:12 AM, Jason KG4WSV <kg4wsv at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have proposed some xastir work as a candidate project for our
> software engineering course.  Potential changes include moving all
> graphics to Qt, implementing some of the V2 features (as I understand
> them, anyway), etc.
>
> If you are interested in providing input for me to write a description
> of the project, or if you are interested in being part of the customer
> team for this project, please let me know ASAP.

hi all, it's time for a new semester and I'm back again.

I think our teams last semester were afraid of a misperceived scope of
the project.  They saw it as "port 160k + lines of xastir 1.9 to Qt"
and ran away.

I thought this time to take a different approach, and spec it as a
cross platform xastir replacement (not a port).   Maybe define
appropriate database records and interfaces (to allow some
implmentation-agnostic simplification, e.g. flat file vs sqlite vs
postgres+GIS), and define some requirements.  This way, the data input
can be as simple as tapping an APRS-IS stream, without mucking around
with a portable RS232 port interface mechanism unless they want to.  I
also thought about restricting the map display types to just shapelib
and maybe a single raster format.

My thoughts are a project that just displayed stations from a database
(with xatir style display filters, etc) would be a decent
contribution, maybe even if it didn't even display maps.  Likewise,
and aggressive physical interface project that would exchange data
with KISS TNCs, KPC TNCs, GPS units, and of course APRS-IS servers
would be useful if it was cross platform and used Qt for the GUI
interaction for configuration.  These ideas are also in line with the
modularization I've seen proposed for V2.

I poked around a bit looking for some obvious internal data structure
for "station" storage, but it didn't jump out at me.  Where should I
look, or would someone like to make some database-oriented suggestions
for a new database definition?

The software engineering prof is very interested in getting the
students involved in a large, open source project involving Qt (those
are three of his favorite topics :) and xatir seems to have interested
him.

-Jason
kg4wsv