[Xastir] Xastir control API?

[Tom Russo]

On Wed, Aug 08, 2012 at 08:47:16AM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <xastir at trinnet.net> flavor, containing:
> Hello Xastir users,
> 
> I normally leave my sole home radio running packet on 145.050 here in 
> Northern California but it would be nice to get back to APRS. Now that 
> Hamlib has Kenwood D710 support (minimal but it does work), I'm looking 
> to expand what I can do. What I'm thinking is setting up sort of time 
> sharing system where I can QSY the radio and then inform the various 
> software systems to go do their thing.
> 
>    Question:  Is there a way to send a signal to Xastir from an external 
> shell script, whatever to tell it to send an APRS beacon?

There is no such interface to Xastir that would allow an external program
to trigger a beacon.

That's not to say one couldn't add such a feature, but it's not there now.
It is probably pretty easy to add a signal handler to do this.

There's some signal handling code that causes Xastir to generate a PNG
snaphot if it receives a SIGUSR1.  One could probably create a signal handler
for SIGUSR2 that causes "beacon now."  I haven't tried this, but if one
were interested in adding such a feature, one could probably copy all the code
for SIGUSR1, change USR1 to USR2, and in the signal handler simply set 
"posit_next_time" to zero.  If you feel like experimenting with that and
get it to work, send us a patch and we'll add it to the code.

There's tons of cool things that *could* be added to Xastir if someone had the
time and inclination to do so.  Your mentioning hamlib reminds me that it
would be pretty cool if Xastir could do rig control (e.g. QSY support for
frequency-spec objects, among other possibilities).  But that's certainly more
work than getting a "beacon now" signal working.


-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
"And, isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is
 one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh,
 oooh, the sky is the limit!"  --- The Tick