[Xastir] Receiving messages

[Tom Russo]

On Wed, May 17, 2023 at 04:17:09PM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <xastir at trinnet.net> flavor, containing:
> 
> Yes, it's possible.

Yes, it's absolutely possible to receive messages in Xastir, and I had 
overlooked one question in the original post that I should have responded to 
much earlier:


    how will I know if a station does respond?

The answer to *that* question is that Xastir will pop up a dialog box with
the message in it.  Kinda hard to miss.

You can also configure Xastir to announce to you that it has received
a message.  One way can make it simply play a sound alerting you, and another
is to use Festival to speak that there's a new message, and even read it to
you.

But all that requires that you be communicating with a station that can 
actually receive your messages and which is operated by an operator who wants 
to reply.

You can tell if a station is actually receiving and accepting your messages
from the dialog box that opens when you try to send the message.  If the 
message has been acknowledged then the text of your outgoing message changes
from reverse video to normal, and Xastir stops transmitting.  If the 
station isn't even sending back ACKs then your outgoing message stays reverse
video and keeps retransmitting (on a slowly decaying interval until it times
out).

Just because the station ACKed the message doesn't mean the operator saw
it, though, only that the message was accepted by the software.  And as has
been pointed out, many mobile operators won't reply while mobile even if
their station is able to.  It's worse than texting while driving, usually, 
as the interfaces to most mobile APRS messaging is about as awful as the early
flipphone texting interfaces.


> On 05/17/2023 04:04 PM, Phil wrote:
> > 
> > On 17/5/23 21:27, steve at coastaldatasystems.com wrote:
> > > There is also the point that the mobile station may be, well,
> > > mobile. I'm
> > > not going to be trying to type a reply to a station when I'm doing
> > > 60-70 mph
> > > down the road.
> > 
> > What I really wanted to know if it's possible to receive a message via
> > Xastir; I don't think so.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY
Tijeras, NM  

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