[Xastir] Suggestion

[Jason Godfrey]

I'm willing to help develop for xastir. How much spare time I have varies
wildly, but I have some. I could give this feature a try.

If xastir-ng isn't dead like I thought, I could help with that as
well/instead.

- Jason



On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 11:50 AM, Curt, WE7U <curt.we7u at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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