[Xastir] Feature idea for Xastir

[Jason Winningham]

On Oct 4, 2007, at 2:50 PM, Stephen - K1LNX wrote:

> Maps, maps and more maps.

Ye gods, xastir already supports hundreds of formats.  If there's an  
area of xastir lacking, that ain't it. (:

> We need the ability to use Google maps

Licensing issues could problematic, but I think someone is already  
keeping an eye on that.

I suspect something more like our own internet map server (or set of  
servers) could be useful, so that the free map data that's available  
could be stored in such a way it could be displayed nicely and  
consistently.  An added bonus to this method would be that those of  
us who operate mobile/internet-less could duplicate the mapserver  
with our personal dataset.

> True cross-platform compatibility. Should it be developed in Python  
> or Java?

I'd say neither, as scripting/interpreted languages (Python) don't  
always scale well (there's a _lot_ of code in xastir).  Python  
doesn't appeal to me for another reason: minor version differences  
are incompatible with each other (ImageMagick, anyone?).  I've got a  
reasonably complex unix enterprise configuration, and python is a  
serious pain. Java seems to be a pig, performance-wise.

I'd like to see xastir remain fairly lightweight for mobile/portable  
applications.

Something like Qt (licensing issues again!) would be more desirable,  
IMO.  wxWidgets claims to be a similar open source cross-platform  
development toolkit, but I know nothing about it (other than the only  
time I tried to install on Solaris it wouldn't build without a fight).

Having said all that, I'll say this: it should be left up to the  
developers, as they'll be writing the code.  As long as the code  
meets user specs it doesn't matter what the implementation details are.

Some of the modularization ideas we've seen kicked around on this  
list leads me to think maybe that  after the inital release of v2,   
the UI module could fork, with different versions for windows, X11,  
and (my personal favorite) Mac OS.


I don't agree with us (the users) setting deadlines.  Again, the  
developers are doing the work, for free, on their own precious time.   
I'm pretty grateful for what we get out of 'em, especially under  
those conditions. (:

-Jason
kg4wsv