[Xastir] Using time field data in Xastir objects plus trail colour

[Curt, WE7U]

On Mon, 31 Jan 2005, James Ewen wrote:

> > Steve Dimse (the findu guy) has talked about this many times, and
> > has convinced me that he's right:  There are too many trackers out
> > there that are using incorrect time values, plus even home stations
> > are often way off.
>
> But, if APRS clients used the embedded timestamps exclusively, people might
> look at their equipment and get the clock synchronized to the rest of the
> world. 8)

Think that'll work?  hi hi


> I'd like to see embedded timestamps be used first, with the option to
> recieved timestamps if requested.

In order to do this, we'd snag the timestamp out of those that had a
timestamp.

If packet has local time, attempt to convert to UTC for that
station's location.  If we don't have a location for them or it's
indeterminate, assign the received timestamp instead.  Actually,
this would be such a pain that we'd just assign the received
timestamp if we got a timestamp in local time due to all of the
differences in daylight savings time plus the irregular borders for
the time zones.

For stations without a timestamp, assign the received timestamp
instead.

If the posit is received out-of-order compared to other packets we
have from that station, re-order the tracklist, then decide whether
to load the station status fields with the new data.  This part of
the code would be a bit of a pain.

I suppose we could even go as far as to have a field for packet time
and for received time, and have a way to switch Xastir to use one
method or the other.

So far I'm hearing quite a few votes for switching to as-transmitted
time.  I can think of a lot of other places in the code though that
need attention, and features that still need to be implemented.  I'd
much rather work on those.


> Watching balloon events via the internet can be challenging due to delayed
> igating.
>
> I joined one balloon event late, and used the 'Fetch Findu Trail' option to
> grab the first portion of the track that I had missed.
>
> Of course, doing so made the old packets interleave with the packet being
> received in real time. This makes for a real interesting trail on the map.

I've done this exact thing before.  I sometimes do this:  Turn off
the interface, clear the track for that station (or clear all tracks
or stations), suck in the track from findu, then turn on the
interface.  Often I'll do this in another Xastir so that I don't
mess up my current picture of the world.

--
Curt, WE7U.   APRS Client Comparisons: 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!"