[aprssig] OBJ engine on APRS-IS (Naming)

[Lynn W. Deffenbaugh (Mr)]

On 2/24/2012 8:52 AM, Bob Bruninga wrote:

> I agree.  Although the object naming convention was broadly defined, it was
> never intended to support unnatural punctuation within names.  I suppose we
> should nail that down...
>
> What name punctuation should we allow?
>
> Minimum:  - _
> More?     /\+=
> More?     !@#$%^&*()
> More?     ~`[]{}|'<>

Given that object and items are very similar in nature, but Item names 
are delimited by shriek (!) or underscore (_), I'd think those 
characters should not be allowed in object/item names for new 
object-creating software.

The newly specified OBJECT server doesn't support embedded spaces in 
object names, but there are lots of objects out there that already 
include spaces (D-Star comes immediately to mind), so we're probably 
stuck with that and may eventually need to figure out a way to encode a 
space into an OBJECT-server object name, but that's a separate discussion.

I noticed that you've already dropped comma from consideration and I 
concur with that elimination.

I'd also like to suggest that we make sure colon and > (at least, if not 
also <) as well as { and } because of their specific use in packet 
formatting and humanly readable packets.

*, being the delimiter for an object name (albeit after a fixed-length 
field) maybe also should be disallowed?

If I had to call out a set that I'd see as visually unambiguous, not 
confused with part of a packet layout, and foreseeably (by me at least) 
useful in object naming, I'd give a thumbs-up to:

- +=@#$%^&()~[]

(Yes, that's a space between - and +).

Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ - Author of APRSISCE for Windows Mobile and Win32