[Xastir] Suggestion

[Curt, WE7U]

On Thu, 24 Jan 2013, Chip G. wrote:

> I've long had an interest in a certain feature for Xastir. Then I noticed that aprs.fi had the feature. So I started thinking about it and how it might be implemented. Now my programming skills are too rusty/weak to do the coding myself, but I have some ideas that make me think it ought to be relatively straight forward to implement.
>
> What I am interested in seeing is a feature to track more than one station (at least two, more might be possible but does increase the complexity). In some ways it is very similar to redrawing the screen by using the mouse. The user clicks on location on the screen, drags the mouse, then releases. The program uses the two points (click & release) to determine the map zoom. If tracking two stations then you can use the same strategy (but one would likely want to zoom a little wider than that so that one isn't constantly zooming). If you have three points (stations) then you would create two points by combining the furthest west with the furthest north and then the furthest east with the furthest south (and add a little bit).

Have you seen how APRS+SA works when tracking multiple stations?  You put in multiple callsigns and it spends something like 5 or 10 seconds on a map view for each one, sequencing through the different map views in round-robin fashion.  It's actually a bit distracting to watch it do that, but kind'a cool also.


> Implementation thoughts:
> -- Basic: use existing dialog, parse the comma separated list
> -- Advanced: add a menu choice and dialog for tracking preferences, add a preference for max zoom in, add a preference for max zoom out (if all can't be fit on the screen it would focus on the first listed station), add a preference for percentage of zoom margin when fitting all stations, add a dialog with separate boxes for each station to be tracked

That last is interesting.  We already have code for figuring out a zoom box via mouse clicks, so invoking the same or similar code based on station max distance X/Y wouldn't be difficult.


> I wonder if any of the more skilled programmers would help me champion this feature. Thanks.

There's the rub.  We have a bunch of developers listed, but at any given time there are between zero and two or three active.  Right now we're at a very low activity level.  We either need to get more people interested in coding, or some of the existing developers need to free up time for the project.

Combined with that:  There's a move afoot to recode Xastir using a different widget set, and initial steps have been made along that front.  If that project ramps up from it's current glacial activity level, it will take up all of the free time of whatever team (team of 1?) is working on it.

I've always wanted such a multi-tracking feature though, mostly for public service events.  I'd prefer to see multiple map windows on the screen at the same time though, independently zoomable/resizeable, each one tracking one or more mobiles independently of the other windows.

So I'll give you a +1, but not sure I can help code it anytime soon.  If people jumped in an helped convert code from the old framework to the new, we could get Xastir recoded in some number of months, then we'd be in an excellent position to add new features such as you describe.

-- 
Curt, WE7U.        http://wetnet.net/~we7u
Closed-minded about open (-source)...