[aprssig] spaces in object names

[Steve Dimse]

On Aug 13, 2009, at 7:16 AM, Dave Skolnick wrote:

> If as quoted the APRS spec says "An Object Report has a fixed
> 9-character Object name, which may consist of any printable ASCII
> characters" then there is in fact no significant ambiguity. Since no
> reference documents are listed in the APRS spec the definition of
> "printable ASCII characters" is dependent on common usage.

Clearly there is abiguity, because different people implemented it  
differently.
>
> If we can agree on that, at least for purposes of discussion, the next
> interesting phrase is "fixed 9-character Object name." To me, that
> says the true Object name should be padded with spaces (or with
> something) to fill out the nine character specification.

In this interpretation there can be no question that trailing spaces  
are significant.
>
> As I noted above, the intention of the drafters is interesting but not
> really relevant. The spec as written and previously amended has been
> depended on by developers and users for a long time. It isn't fair to
> those people to arbitrarily change something (haven't most of the 1.1
> and 1.2 differences been extensions and clarifications?) that they
> could reasonably depend on. Certainly Bob *can* do that but I don't
> believe he *should* do that.

So far not one single person has said something will break if make the  
multiple spaces illegal.

The spec was written for one reason, to improve the utility of APRS as  
a real time tactical system. From the time before it was written it  
was not intended to be the Ten Commandments handed down from on high.  
It was intended to be clarified and modified over time. This is one of  
those situations. The spec is going to be clarified and/or modified.  
The question is how.

Careful consideration is given to breaking things that already exist.  
I asked for specific examples of things that exist which would break,  
and for things which do not exist but are planned and could not be  
implemented if we make the explicit rule that object names may not  
have multiple consecutive spaces. If someone has such a thing, speak  
now.

Steve K4HG