[chirp_users] CHIRP Portable App

[Dan Smith]

> Any move toward making CHIRP a portable App ?

I assume you mean for one of the flat, keyboardless,
heavy-on-the-cool-factor, light-on-the-features computers that are all
the rage these days? The tablet fad tends to generate rants from me, so
here goes:

You won't see it from me for at least the following reasons:

1. CHIRP is written in Python, which lets development proceed at an
   incredibly rapid pace. None of the popular tablet platforms support
   running apps in this language. It would be a total rewrite.
2. The environments for both of the popular ones are fairly specific to
   their platforms, meaning a rewrite to either would not be useful for
   the other, and in most cases, not very useful to desktop users
   either.
3. Most of the devices (and especially the most popular one) is so
   limited that it doesn't have USB host support, which would be
   required for attaching wired serial port. Bluetooth serial support
   is "neat" but fraught with so many potential timing issues it's hard
   to consider it an option. Many of the radios (yaesus especially are
   extremely timing-sensitive and the higher latency of a bluetooth
   connection would be difficult to optimize.
3. I don't really like tablets. I can browse the web on one, but just
   about everything else I do with a computer lends itself to a more
   rich interface than what I can do with my greasy, stubby fingers. I
   don't really understand the current mainstream fascination for the
   devices, I don't own one, and I'm certainly not planning a rewrite
   of the entire code base in order to support one.

I'll let the other devs speak up here in case one of them is planning to
rewrite the 28,758 lines of code in the main repository for either or
both of the two dominant tablet platforms. CHIRP is open-source so
anyone wishing to undertake such an endeavor is more than welcome :)

-- 
Dan Smith
www.danplanet.com
KK7DS

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