Hi Guys, Our design team is following this discussion with great interest because it'll definitely influence what we offer in the future regarding controlling multiple sites. I will disclose one bias, however: >When the prefix is received the prefix decoder generated a telephone >dial tone back down the link.
I'm not in favor of "split" commands -- commands that set up conditions for the next command. Early controllers seem to have favored them; you'd enter a certain code in order to manipulate certain things, and while you're in that particular box, you can't manipulate anything outside of that box. That system is kind of like a "tree" structure because it's hard to navigate and hard to visualize without a diagram. For example, you could be in some kind of command mode (like message editing) when you get kicked off, interfered with, or locked out somehow, and then like the Hotel California, you need to find the place where you were before. I started building controllers in the 70's and was influenced by the line-by-line programming found in DOS, programmable controller, and machine tool scripts. The carriage return/line feed was the command terminator. That's why the S-COM programming language looks like it does, little changed from the beginning. Each command exists as a complete, stand-alone command, independent of any commands that come before it or after it. If you want more complex commands, or readily changeable commands, you use macros -- a concept introduced to the controller market in my first wirewrapped controllers. In addition to no split commands, in S-COM's programming language the (*) and (#) never show up within a command except as "enter" and "abort", respectively. They have no effect if entered ahead of a command; their only effect occurs after other digits are queued. Requiring them inside commands forces you into a fixed format, stilted kind of thinking instead of a variable-length, freeflowing kind of command structure. When it comes to the fourth-column characters (A, B, C, D), we seldom use them in the code due to the fact that some radios and most telephones don't have them. Customers can use them in passwords and macro names, if they wish. I don't think there's anything in our existing structure that would keep us from prepending other characters for whatever purposes. We'll be looking at all of the various ideas presented here and in the archives. 73, Bob Bob Schmid, WA9FBO, Member S-COM, LLC PO Box 1546 LaPorte CO 80535-1546 970-416-6505 voice 970-419-3222 fax www.scomcontrollers.com ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
