[aprssig] Packet Node on 144.390 ?

[Gregg Wonderly]

Ray McKnight wrote:
  Airmail is a native Winderz app, but as has been pointed out if you
> can get Wine to work you can run Airmail under emulation in Linux.
> Airmail is absolutely NOT a necessary interface to WinLink.  It's simply
> another widget intended to present non-technical people a familiar interface
> to make them more comfortable using the system, and reduce training and
> set-up time, especially in places like an EOC where you might have dozens
> of non-Hams from many different backgrounds needing to send e-mail.  By
> giving them a familiar Outlook-style interface it makes the stress level go
> down.

I've argued with them about making the choice to write windows only software. 
In this day and age, there is absolutely no reason to do that.  There are many 
different common GUI libraries for the C language that make multi OS programming 
possible.  There is also Java, which makes it extremely trivial to write "runs 
everywhere" software, with zero porting work.  I created a project at 
http://openlink.dev.java.net where I started by recreating the airmail UI.  It's 
still pretty bare, because I just have too many other things going on.  But, 
anyone who can do the work of filling in the actions, can take the GUI that I've 
created and go at it.

It should be possible to create a very viable PSK implementation in Java. 
However, right now, all the DSP work seems to be focused on windows or C/x86-asm 
environments.  That is such a shame to see all that work not supporting the 
whole amatuer radio service.

Gregg Wonderly