[aprssig] spaces in object names (meaning)

[Randy Love]

Here is my opinion, and I will not go any further because it appears
that I am unintentionally stirring the pot.

By ASCII standards, 0x20 (decimal 32) also known at the space
character is a printable character. This makes it a legal character
for inclusion in any object/station/etc name in APRS.

Trailing spaces are not significant on any name, object/station or
otherwise. Trailing spaces do not make a name unique. They are merely
place holders so that the constructed packet is the proper length for
parsing.

Other than removing trailing spaces, no client/gateway/parser should
otherwise alter an object/station/etc name. This means that from the
first character through to the last non-space character are to be
maintained as received off the air/Inet or as entered by the user.
This would include any number of embedded spaces, meaning spaces that
occur between the first character and last non-space character.

Although multiple embedded consecutive spaces can cause ambiguity,
they are *not* disallowed in a name. These should not be collapsed to
a single space as it produces the possibility of conflicting with
another similarly named entity, and therefore possible unintended data
loss. This should be discouraged, but still allowed as the user may
have a valid reason for using such notation.

I believe that the consensus of the list agrees with the above statements.
But, as Denis Miller would say, "Then again, I could be wrong."

Randy
WF5X