[aprssig] APRS Message Callsign SPEC- Ambiguity

[Kenneth Finnegan]

To quote the APRS-IS login format rules http://aprs-is.net/Connecting.aspx :
"RF and APRS-IS clients may convert lower or mixed case callsigns and SSIDs
to upper case."

While not directly relevant, I think is the most clear description of APRS
station naming requirements and thus the one likely used most often by
developers (Thanks Pete!). I've never made a distinction between APRS-IS
login names and station addressee names, so I'm willing to make the leap of
applying the same limitations to message "addressees", bulletin "bulletin
IDs", and announcement "announcement identifiers".

I know that MANY pieces of software take this liberty and sanitize these
nine character strings to all upper case, not only in station callsigns but
also message addressees (which I hope is what you're talking about here),
so I think trying to go back and make them case-sensitive at this point is
pretty prohibitive, and of little value.

I think it's unfortunate that you didn't use strcasecmp() on this one
device, but I'm voting against trying to make a change to the APRS spec to
make addressees case sensitive.

--
Kenneth Finnegan, W6KWF
http://blog.thelifeofkenneth.com/

On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 2:07 PM, Robert Bruninga via aprssig <
aprssig at tapr.org> wrote:

> There is an unintended ambiguity in the APRS SPEC regarding the addressee
> in the APRS MESSAGE format.
>
>
>
> It was intended that the TOCALL of any transmitted message could be sent
> to ANY 9 character callsign field and this included mixed-case.  Although
> TNC’s have historically forced callsigns to UPEPRCASE only, this is only a
> limitation of TNC’s and was not intended to be a limitation of APRS.
>
>
>
> STATION names, OBJECT names, ITEM names were intended to be a general 9
> character mixed case field in APRS padded to 9 with spaces.
>
>
>
> We just noticed that some radios do not allow sending an APRS message to a
> mixed case address.
>
>
>
> Unfortunately, the QIKCOM-2 satellite which does DTMF-to-Voice and
> APRS-to-voice has a special message address of “QIKCOMsay” for all messages
> it is expected to speak.  So some people will not be able to exercise this
> text-to-voice messaging capability.
>
>
>
> I wont make this mistake in any future satellite, but we are stuck with
> it.
>
>
>
> SO, we might ought-to-identify all APRS radios and APRS clients that have
> this uppercase-only restriction on MESSAGE Callsigns.
>
>
>
> I can say the Kenwoods have it.  Others?
>
>
>
> See http://aprs.org/aprs11.html and specifically, see:
>
> See http://aprs.org/aprs11/aprs-names-and-spaces.txt
>
>
>
> Bob, WB4APR
>
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>
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