I'm willing to help develop for xastir. How much spare time I have varies wildly, but I have some. I could give this feature a try.
If xastir-ng isn't dead like I thought, I could help with that as well/instead. - Jason On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 11:50 AM, Curt, WE7U <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, 24 Jan 2013, Chip G. wrote: > > I've long had an interest in a certain feature for Xastir. Then I noticed >> that aprs.fi had the feature. So I started thinking about it and how it >> might be implemented. Now my programming skills are too rusty/weak to do >> the coding myself, but I have some ideas that make me think it ought to be >> relatively straight forward to implement. >> >> What I am interested in seeing is a feature to track more than one >> station (at least two, more might be possible but does increase the >> complexity). In some ways it is very similar to redrawing the screen by >> using the mouse. The user clicks on location on the screen, drags the >> mouse, then releases. The program uses the two points (click & release) to >> determine the map zoom. If tracking two stations then you can use the same >> strategy (but one would likely want to zoom a little wider than that so >> that one isn't constantly zooming). If you have three points (stations) >> then you would create two points by combining the furthest west with the >> furthest north and then the furthest east with the furthest south (and add >> a little bit). >> > > Have you seen how APRS+SA works when tracking multiple stations? You put > in multiple callsigns and it spends something like 5 or 10 seconds on a map > view for each one, sequencing through the different map views in > round-robin fashion. It's actually a bit distracting to watch it do that, > but kind'a cool also. > > > > Implementation thoughts: >> -- Basic: use existing dialog, parse the comma separated list >> -- Advanced: add a menu choice and dialog for tracking preferences, add a >> preference for max zoom in, add a preference for max zoom out (if all can't >> be fit on the screen it would focus on the first listed station), add a >> preference for percentage of zoom margin when fitting all stations, add a >> dialog with separate boxes for each station to be tracked >> > > That last is interesting. We already have code for figuring out a zoom > box via mouse clicks, so invoking the same or similar code based on station > max distance X/Y wouldn't be difficult. > > > > I wonder if any of the more skilled programmers would help me champion >> this feature. Thanks. >> > > There's the rub. We have a bunch of developers listed, but at any given > time there are between zero and two or three active. Right now we're at a > very low activity level. We either need to get more people interested in > coding, or some of the existing developers need to free up time for the > project. > > Combined with that: There's a move afoot to recode Xastir using a > different widget set, and initial steps have been made along that front. > If that project ramps up from it's current glacial activity level, it will > take up all of the free time of whatever team (team of 1?) is working on it. > > I've always wanted such a multi-tracking feature though, mostly for public > service events. I'd prefer to see multiple map windows on the screen at > the same time though, independently zoomable/resizeable, each one tracking > one or more mobiles independently of the other windows. > > So I'll give you a +1, but not sure I can help code it anytime soon. If > people jumped in an helped convert code from the old framework to the new, > we could get Xastir recoded in some number of months, then we'd be in an > excellent position to add new features such as you describe. > > -- > Curt, WE7U. http://wetnet.net/~we7u > Closed-minded about open (-source)... > > ______________________________**_________________ > Xastir mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-**bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir<http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir> > -- "The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is often difficult to verify their authenticity." - *Abraham Lincoln* _______________________________________________ Xastir mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
