[aprssig] spaces in object names

[Curt, WE7U]

On Wed, 12 Aug 2009, Pete Loveall AE5PL Lists wrote:

> I agree.  Either you allow embedded spaces per the spec or you
> don't.  You don't mangle someone else's work (in this case, Object
> names) because you think someone might mistype one space instead
> of 2.
...
> One was never, ever alter field
> content.  If that field allows for trimming leading/trailing
> spaces (dependent on the vendor specification), then that should
> be done.  But never alter the internal field with "internal" being
> defined by the vendor.  In this case (assuming as most authors
> have that the Object name is left-justified and is right-padded
> with spaces which may be ignored (trimmed) for processing), the
> internal structure is between the first character and the last
> non-space character (if we are going with this definition of
> "internal structure").  Altering that part (between the first
> character and the last non-space character) in any other way only
> adds ambiguity, IMO.

FWIW:  Xastir trims trailing spaces on Object and Item names,
handles embedded spaces in the Object/Item names just fine no matter
the quantity, and handles mixed case names as well.  This was the
best implementation we could come up with that matched our
interpretation of the spec.

Being an engineer I read the "Printable ASCII" bit literally so
assumed space was within that set.  The first 32 chars and the DEL
char at 0x7f are non-printable.  Everything else is fair game unless
specifically exempted in the APRS spec.  I went with the ASCII spec
when it was specifically called out in the APRS spec.

I do believe that "Team 1", "Dog 2", "Horse 3" provide a very easily
understandable label for a tactical display during a SAR mission and
use them that way.  For the Seattle Marathon we use "Sag 1", "Sag
2", etc.

"Team 1" and "team 1" and "Team   1" are all different objects (or
items) in Xastir.  Per the spec.

-- 
Curt, WE7U.                         <http://www.eskimo.com/~archer>
    APRS:  Where it's at!                    <http://www.xastir.org>
   Lotto:  A tax on people who are bad at math. - unknown
Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates. - WE7U.
The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"