[chirp_users] Displaying odd repeater splits

[gerard]

Thanks for the background info. As a software professional myself, I appreciate 
the technical challenges as well as the natural tendencies of software 
developers.  Your idea of basing the default behaviour based on the frequency 
range makes sense to me. Another option would be to have a picklist or 
check-box/toggle above the Offset column to force the display in one format or 
another. Maybe only show it when the radio doesn't store the format.

Unfortunately, the current behavior, of showing it always as +/- and providing 
no way to convert back (selecting "split" on an existing memory slot zero's out 
the rx offset by inserting the base frequency) really should be considered a bug 
as it is effectively "Write-only Memory".  At least fix it so that when you 
change + or - to split, it does the math and shows you the resulting frequency. 
That *should* be trivial to do.

I finally figured out what the  "Properties" button does (it does nothing and 
provides no feedback if you have no memory item selected, so it really should be 
disabled/greyed-out.) If I change from + to split in the Memory Properties pane, 
it gives me a warning icon telling me the offset is out of range! Duhh! That's 
because it *is* an offset, not a frequency. And Chirp should change it to a 
frequency automatically when I change from +/- to split. That would at least 
give me a way to see the frequency without having to do math in my head. I would 
like to report this as a bug as this is just plain wrong!

Thanks again,

Gerard

On 3/2/2016 12:51 PM, Tom Hayward wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 11:09 AM, gerard <gmkayaker at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm am a long-time user of VHF radios starting with a VX-150 some 15 years ago
>> and switching to Baofeng UV-5R when they were relatively new. I have been using
>> Chirp to program my UV-5R since I first got the radio. One thing that I find
>> annoying about how Chirp works with repeater splits is that it shows it as a +
>> or a -. Most people I deal with in Canada give me frequency pairs. And I haven't
>> found an easy way to get Chirp to show me the actual frequency (as opposed to
>> the +/-.)  When I enter a frequency as a "split", it immediately gets converted
>> to "+/-" and there seems to be no way to get Chirp to show it as a "split". This
>> makes it really hard to confirm that I have the correct frequency entered; I
>> need to do frequency math in my head or paper which increases the likelihood of
>> errors.
> This is a shortcoming of the UV5R. It cannot differentiate from offset
> and independent tx/rx records--the radio stores them identically.
> Chirp assumes that most users are hams and prefer the +/- offset view,
> so that's how Chirp displays offsets less than 70 MHz. (This is the
> conversion you're talking about.)
>
>> It would be great if Chirp had a setting that allowed me to say "Always show
>> splits using the format entered" or "Always show splits in: " and let me choose
>> between +/- and "split".
> Most ham radios (Yaesu, Icom, Kenwood) differentiate offset and
> odd-split records. With these radios, Chirp displays the frequency or
> offset as entered.
>
> For the UV5R, this would require storing the "format entered"
> somewhere. The UV5R memory provides nowhere to store this, so that
> means we would need some sort of proprietary Chirp file to store this
> information. The .img files are just a simple dump of the radio
> memory, not proprietary, and don't offer a place to store auxiliary
> data like this. This would only be beneficial when editing said
> proprietary file--after doing a "Download from Radio" you'd be back to
> just what was stored in the UV5R. Not really an optimal solution.
>
> I've proposed an alternative scheme: on radios that don't know the
> difference between an offset and an odd split, display as offsets in
> the ham band and as tx/rx frequency outside the ham band. This would
> work great for me as I program a number of Part 90 certified radios
> for mixed Part 90 and ham use. In my area, ham repeater channels are
> usually communicated by offset and commercial channels by their tx/rx
> frequencies. However, this scheme presents some challenges too. The
> hand bands differ by locale and not everyone has the same preference
> as myself.
>
> Your other idea, '"Always show splits in: " and let me choose between
> +/- and "split"' has its own challenges. Besides the UI work to add
> this preference selection (which most Chirp developers tend to avoid
> due to its complexity), I think it would require updating all radio
> drivers to support the new scheme--a monumental task. Also, it would
> defeat the feature of most ham radios that properly differentiate
> between offsets and odd-split records.
>
> The way Chirp does it now was chosen intentionally to please the
> largest number of users. Unfortunately we can't please everyone. We're
> always open to discuss new ideas--that's what this mailing list is for
> (or the chirp_devel list for the implementation details). Hopefully
> this background on the treatment of offsets and radios that don't
> support them is helpful fodder for discussion.
>
> Tom KD7LXL
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