[Xastir] While we are on the subject of feature ideas for Xastir

[Gerry Creager]

Pardon me while I don my Nomex.
<soapbox>
<--- It's been a bad two weeks.  More'n likely I should let this pass 
and go to bed early, but, well, it's been a rough two weeks.  The best I 
can say is, that low in the Gulf of Mexico shows no signs of becoming a 
hurricane and hitting Texas.  Hope y'all can take this as my attempt at 
both some commentary, and a little humor --->

Joseph M. Durnal wrote:
> Some things that I can do with APRSDos, like bring up a command window
> to the TNC, handle NTS formatted messages

I can't think of a reason to have to get into the TNC once it's 
configured, and it really should be run in KISS.  What'd a terminal 
window buy you there?

And, NTS traffic is not a suitable use for APRS or Xastir, IMNSHO. 
Others will disagree, but NTS traffic is not nearly as important as 
e-mail and file transfer.  I've handled my share of NTS traffic on three 
modes plus MARS message and phonepatch traffic dating back to the 
Vietnam era.  So, yeah, I'm an old fart, but I'm still playing with new 
modes.  Take a look at LinLink and the listserv surrounding it.  I'm not 
sure we're ever gonna solve anything but the discussion has been real solid.

> (http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/APRS-docs/NTS.TXT), and not that I
> can do this in APRSDos, but the ability to be able to create objects
> freehand instead of being limited to what the interface will allow,
> like using a different path for the object, etc.  At least these are
> the things that I'd add if I could write code.  I suppose I should
> ask, does xastir do these things already or has someone already put it
> on a to do list?  It is just strange that there are things that I can
> do in Dos that I can do on a modern OS.

GUIs are not designed to make anything easier, necessarily, for  the 
user.  That's a fiction we foist off on users to make them think 
programmers are their friends.  GUIs are designed to limit most users to 
be able to do just what the GUI programmer wanted them to do. 
Sometimes, that does help:  It could prevent you from sending out a 
pathologic packet on the channel designed to make APRSDos grind to a 
halt....  As was claimed for OpenTrac a couple of years ago.

One thing to consider is this: I spend my life, now, in Linux.  Most of 
it is spent at the command line save for the specific applications I am 
using that require some form of graphical interface because of their 
overall complexity.  I'm a dinosaur.  I LIKE the command prompt.  But I 
use Xastir because it's the most full-featured APRS client out there. 
Did  mention I used APRSDos to track cows in the somewhat fabled 
Cows-In-Space project.  And displayed data back in the old days, to 
sub-bovine accuracy?  And was published for the effort?

</soapbox>

OK: I am now switching gears and asking for opinions and comments on a 
vizualization product.  If y'all would look at 
http://mesonet.tamu.edu/scoop-cgi/ogc/wrf and give me off-list feedback, 
I'd appreciate it.  I'm running the WRF (community developed Weather 
Research and Forecasting)model over a rather large domain, from ~40W to 
~105W and ~5N to ~55N.  The display is surface wind fields.  The purpose 
of this model is to provide 10 meter height winds and surface barometric 
pressures to initialize ocean circulation and wave models, which will in 
turn be used to help predict storm surge and inundation.

This group is well-known for giving pretty unabridged opinions.

Oh, yeah.  After a week of messing with settings and recovering from a 
multi-disk failure on a raid shelf, we've got a new 8TB volume up and 
have the WSR88D radar mosaics back up for your overlay pleasure.  In the 
middle of that, my sys admin left for a new job and I'm _really_ back on 
the command line on Linux!

73 gerry
-- 
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University	
Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.862.3983
Office: 1700 Research Parkway Ste 160, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843