[aprssig] Mic-E format issues

[Joel Maslak]

On Jul 14, 2008, at 8:17 AM, Bob Bruninga wrote:

> For network integrity, each design needs to have its own  
> identifier.  So if anyone is building Mic-E devices, lets work up  
> the definitions and I will post on the APRS web page.


I disagree - I couldn't care less whether I'm transmitting to a D-7,  
a D-700, a D-710, an OpenTrak, etc, and I certainly couldn't tell you  
what the "quirks" of each are.  I have no idea how many characters of  
a message a D-7 can receive, for instance - nor do I particularly  
want to know.

What I *do* care about is "Can I send messages to this station?" and  
maybe even "Is the two-way messaging capability complete, or did they  
leave some features out?"

Can we focus on capabilities?  If someone makes a radio that has  
*exactly* the same capabilities as a D-700, why should it need a new  
ID?  If radio version and make and such is useful, then the thing  
should be using Base-91 compressed positions, not Mic-E.  But even  
then, we need a way of expressing *capability* in a way that people  
can understand, not just expressing what model radio (Quick: Does  
SmartPalm - APZPAD - display objects?  I don't know, and I wrote the  
first version!).

We need to identify which capabilities are useful to know, and figure  
out a way of making that easy to remember, without having to remember  
what every type of APRS device can and can't do.