[Xastir] Re: [Xastir-dev] Desired object/item operation?

[Curt Mills]

On Fri, 7 May 2004, Tom Russo wrote:

> On Fri, May 07, 2004 at 09:14:11AM -0700, a Mr. Richard Feyler of Fort Lee, New Jersey <archer at eskimo.com> writes 'Dear Rosanne Rosannadanna':
> >
> > What is the desired operation here?
>
> Well, as long as you ask, I *hate* the "connect new object of the same
> name to any killed object" behavior.  Fact is, in the "heat of battle"
> on SAR missions I often get a point wrong the first time I enter it (perhaps
> I get fat-fingered and enter 35d instead of 34d in there, or somehow
> delete the W in the longitude and wind up with an object in China), and the
> only way to clear the mistake off my display is to kill the object, then
> create a new one with a different name.  I would be very happy if Xastir
> would ignore positions in the database for killed objects, and only display
> the ones that are not marked as killed.
>
> Persistent display is good, too --- don't display killed points before or
> after the restart.

Well, guess what?  All your prayers have been answered.  Yesterday!

The current operation should be exactly as you describe, plus we now
have the decaying algorithm for objects/items.  We already had a
similar but more aggressive algorithm for messaging, plus the
REPLY-ACK algorithm for that as well.  That means the only type of
transmit that isn't similar to the decaying algorithm is the station
transmit, which is either timed or Smart-Beaconed.

You should get fast transmits when you first create an object/item,
when you change an object/item in any way, and when you first start
up Xastir with non-killed objects/items in your object.log file.

Xastir now randomizes the transmit time by subtracting between 0%
and 20% of the interval each time it computes the new doubled
interval for each object/item.  You won't end up with lots of
objects/items transmitted all at once, plus the packet rate
decreases quickly, keeping the channel usage low.

The interval for each object doubles each time (minus the up to 20%
randomizing), up to the max interval set with the timing slider.
When you first start up Xastir with active objects, it takes 3 or 4
transmits before the intervals are sufficiently randomized.  When
you're creating objects by hand, that act alone is a good
randomizing factor to help keep them from grouping together
transmit-wise.

I also fixed some bugs related to finding/marking-as-killed
objects and items in the object.log file.

Please let me know if you see strange operation.  In the limited
testing I did it was all working pretty well.

-- 
Curt, WE7U.				archer at eskimo dot com
http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
  Lotto:  A tax on people who are bad at math. - unknown
Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates. - WE7U.
The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"