[Xastir] Group Messages

[Frank Tomesch]

Thanks for the information.  I had proposed to the local aprs users around 
here that we have a net.  One of them sugessted that we use the group 
messaging feature.  I couldn't find much information about it so I posed 
the questions to this group.  Just about all of us use Xastir and Linux so 
we really don't have to worry about UIView.

----- Frank -----
----- KA1GL -----


On Tue, 12 Feb 2008, William McKeehan wrote:

> I have used the capability occasionally.
>
> The file is looking for a group name with a possible wildcard (*) on each line.
>
> For example, my file looks like this:
> ETNAPRS
> SKYMRX
> SKYWRN
> SPCL
> SKY*
> BLN*
> NWS*
> MRX*
> CQ
> ALL
> QST
>
> As such, a message sent to ETNAPRS will pop-up on my display.
>
> I host a Sunday night APRS Net locally and we tried to use this at one point,
> but found that the way UI-View handles the messages is odd - I do not recall
> the details - as a result, we dropped the use of it (too many UI-View users in
> the area).
> -- 
> William McKeehan
> KI4HDU
> http://mckeehan.homeip.net
>
> On Tue, February 12, 2008 3:34 pm, Curt, WE7U wrote:
>> On Tue, 12 Feb 2008, Frank Tomesch wrote:
>>
>>> Can anyone tell me whether 'Group Messaging' works? and/or the format of
>>> the '.xastir/config/groups' file.
>>
>> Don't know.  This is a little-used feature in Xastir.
>>
>> Found "groups" in xa_config.c.  It using "GROUP_DATA_FILE" as the
>> label in the config file, and "group_data_file" as the local
>> variable inside Xastir that it keeps the filename/path in.
>>
>> messages.c uses "group_data_file" and then calls group_build_list()
>>
>> messages.c:group_build_list() reads from the file and puts the data
>> into "group_data_list".
>>
>> I see we manually stuff a few things in first before reading from
>> the file:
>>
>>   // Make sure we always listen for ourself, XASTIR, & our Version
>>   // groups
>>     xastir_snprintf(&group_data_list[0],10,"%s",my_callsign);
>>     xastir_snprintf(&group_data_list[10],10,"XASTIR");
>>     xastir_snprintf(&group_data_list[20],10,"%s",XASTIR_TOCALL);
>>     group_data_count = 3;
>>
>> So it looks like each field has 10 characters and they're in one big
>> string.
>>
>> A quick glance at the while loop which reads it in makes me think
>> that each group name is on a separate line with a linefeed (or
>> alternately linefeed & carriage return) at the end of each line.
>> Actually it looks like they expect up to 9 characters and then a
>> linefeed, which is enough for a six-character callsign, a dash, and
>> a 2-character SSID.
>>
>> --
>> Curt, WE7U: <www.eskimo.com/~archer/>     XASTIR: <www.xastir.org>
>>   "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!
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>>
>
>