[Xastir] Suggestion

[Fred Hillhouse]

In APRSIS32, each tracked station gets its own window. I have a window
centered on my location, and track others in the own little world. ;)


Best regards,
Fred, N7FMH



> -----Original Message-----
> From: xastir-bounces at lists.xastir.org 
> [mailto:xastir-bounces at lists.xastir.org] On Behalf Of Curt, WE7U
> Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 12:50
> To: Xastir - APRS client software discussion
> Subject: Re: [Xastir] Suggestion
> 
> 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)...
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