[aprssig] Protocol improvement ideas, deprecation

[Heikki Hannikainen]

On Fri, 11 Feb 2022, Scott Miller wrote:

> If we're stuck with the APRS protocol forever, I'd at least like to see 
> some things deprecated. I'm sure the most controversial item on my own 
> hit list would be the MIC-E format, mostly for the way it violates 
> separation of protocol layers by reusing a callsign field for data. 
> Base91 can do the same job more cleanly.

Yes, I fully agree, it would be good to reduce complexity and provide some 
sort of a "APRS implementation best practices" document on which protocol 
features to implement first, and which to not use when writing new 
transmitters. Reducing duplicate functionality would be good. Mic-E is not 
the most beautiful aspect of the protocol, but unfortunately it is quite 
popular.

A feature could be deprecated by documenting that packets must not be 
generated in this format by new encoders. For decoders we could have a 
document outlining which formats must be decoded, and which deprecated 
formats are still so common in the field that in practice they need to be 
decoded.

   - Hessu