[Xastir] Feature idea for Xastir

[Gerry Creager]

Brad Douglas wrote:
> 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! ;-).

I gave up on AutoDesk.  I run the "normal" Mapserver code.  The compile 
and dependencies are tricky but we could standardize on a release and 
config and roll out a new one periodically.  Or not.

> [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. :-(

Used to think that, then I started testing for IE and just giving them 
an error page (Your browser doesn't support real web interaction. 
Please upgrade to Opera or Firefox.) and my life got better.  Carefully 
crafted JS is usable.  I suspect carefully crafted Python is, too. 
Given a choice I'd still write ALL my code in Fortran...

> 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.

I work in Fortran for most of my coding these days.  Yes, Fortran. 
That's what weather models are generally written in.  I wrote my 
geodetic processing code, and modified someone else's, in Fortran, too. 
  I suspect that, when I really have to, I'll go learn Python.  I know 
there's not a good graphics development object in f90 or f95 I can use.  :-(

gerry
-- 
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University
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