[aprssig] spaces in object names

[Steve Dimse]

On Aug 12, 2009, at 4:58 PM, Pete Loveall AE5PL Lists wrote:

> While you rightly point that trimming trailing spaces for  
> readability seems reasonable, no where do you give any reason why  
> (other than your laziness) that deleting embedded spaces is justified.

Did you bother to read what I wrote? I clearly stated that was a bug,  
and I fixed it. It was there because it never occurred to me that  
someone would consider space a printing character. Since I thought  
there would never be a space there, I did not add the code to trap the  
invalid packet. I did handle it incorrectly, and I fixed it. The  
question is, will you do the same now that the spec has been clarified?

>  In fact, regardless of your "discussion with Bob", the  
> specification is what it is and the ASCII space character has - 
> never- been considered a control character.

I agree space is not a control character. Too bad the spec does not  
say control character. It says printable character. Since nothing is  
printed by a space, I consider it non-printable. I'm not alone. If it  
had occurred to anyone in the APRS WG that this was not universally  
understood we would have made it clear in the original document.

> This is another example of you losing a private argument

What losing? We disagree on what a printing character is. The first  
several references in Google agree with my position. Others agree with  
yours. I conceded it was a debatable issue, but it could not be left  
there. What is not debatable is the intent of the people that wrote  
the spec. The object "K4HG     " and K4HG are a single entity, and  
embedded spaces are not to appear in objects.

> and thereby taking the opportunity to try to make everyone believe  
> that because you were, and I quote, "lazy" that makes something that  
> somebody else did per the spec "invalid".
>
There are two separate issues here. First there is the fact that my  
code simply removed all spaces. This was a bug, I admitted it. It was  
not intentional laziness, it just never occurred to me that anyone  
would consider placing space as a printing character. You being  
perfect, you wouldn't understand someone that makes a mistake, public  
admits it, and fixes it.  The second issue is how other people  
interpreted the spec. If their interpretation did not make the  
tactical use of APRS more difficult, I would not have cared.

I granted that the spec was unintentionally ambiguous, because of the  
differing opinion on what is a "printable character". It cannot be  
left like this, the spec needs to be mase clear, and Bob did that.  
This is what we intended the spec to mean, and more importantly, it is  
the way it needs to be if APRS users are not to face the confusing  
situation of a map containing multiple entities appearing to be  
labeled identically.

Steve K4HG