[Xastir] Feature idea for Xastir

[Brad Douglas]

On Tue, 2007-10-09 at 14:03 -0500, Gerry Creager wrote:
> Brad Douglas wrote:
> > On Thu, 2007-10-04 at 14:27 -0400, William McKeehan wrote:
> >> Well, the last time we discussed this, I think this is where the discussion
> >> ended (after we managed to get a piglatin translation added to the
> >> repository).
> >>
> >> I've been playing and thinking about this a fair amount. What about using
> >> HTML/JavaScript/XML ala Ajax? This would require Xastir having an "http" style
> >> server that would serve up pages and would respond to certain queries with XML
> >> code. For example if Xastir's server were listening on port 8001,
> >> http://localhost:8001/getStationInformation?callsignssid=KI4HDU-2 would
> >> respond with something like
> >> <station>
> >>     <CallsignSSID>KI4HDU-2</CallsignSSID>
> >>     <PacketsReceived>75</PacketsReceived>
> >>     <LastHeard>10/04/2007 14:05:08</LastHeard>
> >>     <Comments>
> >>         <Comment>10/04 14:05 : .open2300v1.10</Comment>
> >>         <Comment>10/04 14:00 :</Comment>
> >>     </Comments>
> >> .
> >> .
> >> .
> >> </station>
> > 
> > Are you suggesting that everyone have a working http server on their
> > local machine?  That is quite an excessive (and generally insecure)
> > method of accomplishing the given goal, locally.
> 
> I don't seem to have too much in the way of security problems with web 
> servers on darned near everything we stand up, either apache or tomcat. 
>   We also run some stand-alone systems.  I do tend to look for 
> excessive, unsuccessful login attempts and automatically block them, and 
> my iptables rules are pretty tight, but standing up a basic web server 
> and securing it isn't a big deal.  Or, am I demonstrating, again, how 
> warped I've become?

I prefer to not require that users be as security minded as we are.
It's a problem waiting to happen, not to mention the fact that users
will be required to install and properly setup a web server and the
necessary extensions (mapserver/FDO?) in the first place.

Even I have trouble getting FDO to install properly (damn you,
Autodesk! ;-).

[snip]

> >> Does this sound like something that would be useful? Personally, I think this
> >> would let people develop their own APRS "interface" using Xastir to do the
> >> heavy lifting - and I think that if done correctly, this would eventually let
> >> you run Xastir in a daemon mode and only use this interface if you wanted to.
> > 
> > IMO, wxPython is the way to go for GUI development.
> 
> IMNSHO, either will do.  I write more javascript these days than python, 
> as someone else has become the python guru around here.

Again, similar to Java, JS is write once; test everywhere; rewrite;
test; rewrite; test...  Not all JS behaves equally in all browsers. :-(

Python is surprisingly easy to learn and does not suffer to licensing
and flame wars others are subjected to.  I've made my case so I'll shut
up, now.  YMMV.


-- 
73, de Brad KB8UYR/6 <rez touchofmadness com>