[chirp_devel] Mode designator for YSF?

[Dan Smith]

> I see. What bothers me the most about this approach (and I guess that is 
> more important than the technobabble from above): At least around here, 
> some repeaters are multimode analog & digital and some others are 
> digital only. With the solution you propose, I would want to set the 
> multimode ones to DN with the default AMS and the digital only ones to 
> DN with no AMS. I would definitely not want to leave AMS on for the 
> latter ones, as that would leave me with random analog squelch openings 
> when I hit QRM, or it would require met to set up some kind of mock-TSQL 
> to avoid that. But what I should do instead is turn AMS off. And 
> entering a context menu and property dialog to do that would annoy me 
> quite a bit in particular if I would not see the current setting in the 
> main editor.

Yeah, well, CHIRP has always been a bit sparse on the main editor, with multiple device-specific things in the properties dialog on memories. For someone that uses an FT2D for FM and APRS, they don't need to see all the digital stuff anyway. The Yaesu software (like many others) kinda ridiculously scrolls to the right forever because they have every possible thing visible all the time.

Anyway, the thing I'm trying to resolve here is not the UI aspect (yet), but the compatibility one. In order to enable copying one of these memories between two radios that both support YSF, we need a common, unique, and meaningful mode designator.  D-STAR is a system, but DV is very clearly the mode that I'm looking for. The more I dig into the radio, their software, the manual, and your brain, the more I realize YSF is, well, not very clear-cut here. Regardless, CHIRP as an abstraction needs to call it something and I think DN for the basic case is what we should use. Messing with the radio a bit, I see that when VW is enabled, they show "VW" as the mode very clearly. So perhaps that means we really do need to add VW to the top-level list of modes as well, I dunno.

The UI aspect of exposing all (or the most important) device-specific characteristics of a memory in the main memory editor is something we can improve separately, but it brings all kinds of issues as well like bubbling up YSF-specific (or D-STAR or DMR) "rules" into the presentation layer that have to be wrangled. But even still, the mode designator for compatibility between radios, repeater directories, etc is necessary and where we need to start I think.

In the (most recent) bug asking for YSF support, the reporter even said "forget the analog bit, just call it DN and make it digital always". I guess in his area, they don't do the multi-mode part much :)

--Dan