[aprssig] APRS Bulletin/Announcement Format?

[Curt Mills]

On Fri, 26 May 2006, Robert Bruninga wrote:

> But I wonder how you display it?  Overwriting and replacing only
> makes sense if the "Bulletin DIsplay" is a fixed "window" that
> retains all active bulletins, sorts them by call and by line nummber.

We have a View->Bulletin window that shows all bulletins we've
received.  It can be set to pop up on new bulletins, and in fact
that's the default.  It doesn't sort the way you describe, as far as
I recall.  My APRS station here at home needs to be set up again.  I
took it down to scavenge some equipment for the APRS classes last
weekend.


> THe worst travesty on the bulletin concept is just a chronological 
> log of bulletin packets received.  Some software does it that
> way, and that makes bulletins just running spam with no
> sense of present value, tactical significance nor editability.

We basically do it that way, except we also overwrite those with
the same credentials as new ones come in.  So it is mixed up a bit,
but if you have the "view zero-distance bulletins" turned off and a
mile limit put in, there won't be that many bulletins displayed.


> THe original concept of BULLETINS and ANNOUNCEMENTS was
> just like a wooden Bulletin Board in the EOC where the LATEST
> bulletins and announcements were placed, maintained,
> edited and constantly updated if they were still valid.  EVERYONE
> in APRS saw exactly the SAME bulletin board.
> 
> All that was lost when some clones just list bulletins as they 
> come in.
> 
> Thanks for taking a fresh look at it.

I admit I haven't had much personal interest in bulletins until
lately.  The Bulletin code in Xastir was there when I joined the
project and I haven't done much to that body of code.

I saw the "recommended usage" page in the spec w.r.t.  bulletins and
announcements.  We do the overwriting thing, but we don't sort them
as described or allow the user to delete them.  One thing we do have
is a range filter for them, and also allow viewing of bulletins that
don't have a distance associated (in other words the callsign
sending the bulletin hasn't sent a posit).

So... We're not quite as bad as "some clones" you describe, but we
are lacking in some respects.  Also in the sending of bulletins:
A user would need to know how to format a bulletin, group bulletin,
or announcement themselves in the Send Message dialog in order to
send any of those, plus they end up sending the message ID at the
end too.  Obviously we've been concentrating on other things than
bulletins.  I'm sure they'll catch up eventually.  They just need
one developer or coding user to take and interest and do up some
patches.

-- 
Curt, WE7U.				archer at eskimo dot com
http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
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