[Xastir] "UP" on QUERIES

[Tom Russo]

On Sat, May 26, 2018 at 08:01:57PM +0200, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <mlhpub at free.fr> flavor, containing:
> Hi all,
> 
> Thanks Curt and Tom for explanations about capital letters and the 
> perfect compliance with APRS specifications.
> I have tried today with Cyril with 30 m Robust-Packet.
> Juste a last question about this : if queries from RF interface are 
> processed, the same from TCP/IP interface look ignored.

No, we respond to spec-compliant queries we receive from any interface.  
I just tested it by sending my home Xastir station a directed query from a 
laptop that had only a TCP/IP interface.  The query was answered Just Fine.

But it does appear that there is something up with how we preocess queries, 
because I have seen that just trying to send a regular message (i.e. not
one created by one of our directed query buttons in the station info dialog),
it does not get processed as a query, but as a message (which is acked, but 
does not generate the answer).  I also confirmed that ---- from the very
same laptop where the "direct station query" worked perfectly, sending 
"?APRSD" in a message didn't.  That's a little annoying.

The spec says that queries are not supposed to have message ID numbers, and
it appears that Xastir is not answering them if they do, and instead just
treats it as a regular incoming message.

I have seen exactly the same behavior from javAPRSSrvr, the software that
powers many of the core igates and many local igates.  They'll respond to
spec-compliant queries without the message ID, but not to one with the 
message id.

Xastir does not have any mechanism for creating messages that don't have
message sequence numbers, so the only way to get Xastir to create a query 
packet correctly is to use one of the directed query buttons on the station 
info dialog.  Which doesn't help you much if the station you're trying to 
query isn't on your map.

It would be nice if Xastir's messaging system could notice that the message
text was of the format of a legal query and could generate the message packet
without the sequence number, but I remember looking into that a long time ago
and concluding that the code was written in such a manner that it would 
have been difficult to do it.  I haven't looked at it again in years, I might 
have been wrong to conclude that. 

> Le 24/05/2018 ?? 17:51, Tom Russo a ??crit??:
> > On Thu, May 24, 2018 at 09:38:29AM +0200, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <f1mhv at free.fr> flavor, containing:
> >> Hello Group,
> >>
> >> Just to bring an ?? UP ?? on Matthieu???s email ;-)
> >>
> >> - Missing basic queries sur as ?APRSD , ?APRSP etc???
> > Xastir already answers APRSD and APRSP queries.  I use them to force my home
> > station to report to me.
> >
> > But they MUST be upper case, per the spec.  We had a complaint years ago
> > from UIView users who said Xastir didn't respond, but it was because they
> > were typing in queries by hand and using lower case.  The APRS spec says
> > that queries are supposed to be upper case.  It appears that in 2004, Curt
> > added code to Xastir to print a notice to STDERR when we receive one that
> > has the wrong case, saying "consider telling the sender to follow the spec."
> >
> > As Curt notes, Xastir does not implement all the queries from the spec, though.
> > A quick scan of db.c/process_directed_query shows APRSD, APRSP, APRST and its
> > synonym "PING?", and VER.  There's a block of code for each of the other
> > queries, but only to recognize them and then ignore them:
> >    APRSH
> >    APRSM
> >    APRSO
> >    APRSS
> >
> >
> > In the next function down (as Curt also notes), "process_query", there are
> > also non-directed queries we recognize:
> >   APRS?
> >   IGATE?
> >
> > and we recognize but ignore "WX?"
> >
> >
> >>> Le 19 mai 2018 ?? 22:55, MLHPUB <mlhpub at free.fr> a ??crit :
> >>>
> >>> Hi all,
> >>>
> >>> May I suggest 3 ideas for Xastir after few years of use ?
> >>>
> >>> 1- Queries
> >>> It should be great if Xastir could answer APRS queries (?aprsh or ?aprsd for instance, and others). These are really usefull to test stations capabilities especially on HF (or other bands of course) when propgation is good !
> >>>
> >>> 2- Message timer
> >>> Other stations, digi or igate, are sometimes slow to react facing Xastir which retry a message quickly after the first sent. I noticed this "aggressive" behavior especially with slow links (300bds HF).
> >>> Can we imagine an adjustable timer for this parameter ?
> >>> Because it looks progressive when retries are growing (APRS specs ?), 3 steps could be possible :
> >>> - quite
> >>> - normal
> >>> - aggressive
> >>>
> >>> 3- Data and messages views
> >>> Data view and messages view are really usefull to monitor trafic but I think date and time informations are missing.
> >>> How about add this in a short field for each line on these monitor windows ?
> >>>
> >>> Sorry if theses ideas are not new but I really think they reflect what is missing for me in this wonderful APRS software.
> >>>
> >>> Standing by if anyone want to speak about :)
> >>>
> >>> 73 de F4ACU
> >>>
> >>> Matthieu
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Xastir mailing list
> >>> Xastir at lists.xastir.org
> >>> http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Xastir mailing list
> >> Xastir at lists.xastir.org
> >> http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Xastir mailing list
> Xastir at lists.xastir.org
> http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY
Tijeras, NM  

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