[aprssig] spaces in object names PROPOSAL

[Steve Dimse]

On Aug 13, 2009, at 11:39 AM, Bob Bruninga wrote:

> Can we all sign on to these interpretations:
> 1) Drop trailing spaces

Yes

> 2) Retain embedded spaces

A single embedded space. yes.

I maintain that it is equally confusing to allow "A B" and "A  B" to  
be two distinct things as it is to allow "A" and "A       " to be  
different things. I still think we should disallow consecutive spaces.  
And in fact, after thinking about one of Pete's points yesterday, I'm  
inclined to push for disallowing more than one non-alphanumeric in a  
row. For example "A--B" would be illegal, "A-B-C" is fine. Non-alpha  
characters definitely add to the confusion.

> 3) Treat all resulting names independent of how they were received  
> as the same "thing" with respect to replacement, overwriting, and/or  
> killing.

yes

> 4) And of course, retain in your data base the distinction of  
> whether it is an object or a station as needed for user selection,  
> manipulation and display, and so that ownership is preserved until  
> replaced.  But in all cases the latest "identically named" thing  
> replaces any other.

yes.

Here is a proposed wording for discussion:

Object names consist of 9 printable ASCII characters (including  
space). The first must be non-space, and no more than one consecutive  
non-alphanumeric character is allowed. The name is padded out with  
spaces, these trailing spaces are not considered part of the final  
object name. In other words, the object "ABC      " matches with a  
station "ABC" already heard by a client program.