[drats_users] D-RATS 0.2.9b1

[Dan Smith]

> I will be testing the Amber alert email setup tomorrow and let you know how
> it works. The ability to tailor actions by account should provide enough
> flexibility to accomplish all of this. 

Well, you likely won't be able to convince the amber alert system to 
format the address properly.  They usually just send it to a raw email 
address, thus D-RATS can create a form for it, but won't know what 
station to try to send it to.

>> Enable a "pull" trigger for emails received to a station set up for
> incoming forms so that a mobile station can send a ping type request to the
> gateway and receive those messages that have been received for them.  This
> would allow the mobile user to retrieve emails when in range of a Dstar
> gateway system.   (Store and Forward)  This would be possible using call
> sign routing from the mobile station (assuming the gateway station has call
> sign auto write turned on ). 

Yes, I've had plans for this for a long time, but there is a lot 
involved in doing it right.

>> Expand the levels for the Map Download utility to download to the street
> level (level 17)

Oh, whoops.  I guess I didn't update the downloader when I updated 
D-RATS to support the additional two zoom levels.  I need only change a 
single character in the source file to fix that :)

>> Enable a "right click" on a station and access the information field.
> Extremely important when accessing information about the capabilities of an
> emergency facility. 

Hmm, I'll have to think on this one for a bit.

>> Provide for multiple recipients in the mail form (outgoing)

Yeah, yeah. :)

>> Establish group send for incoming emails. ( sort of the inverse of above)
> distribution list in the windows world

Boy, this is quite a wish list.

>> Provide an audible action when a new message is received.

Yeah, unfortunately this is highly platform-specific and thus will 
likely be a pain in the rump.

>> Enable logic to automatically play received audio files. (send wav type
> files to the sound card) This would allow NWS, EBS, and Amber alerts to be
> announced when received.

Hmm, sounds dangerous.  First off, you wouldn't be able to send any 
significant WAV file over D-STAR given the speed.  Second, in order to 
play anything highly compressed, we'd need to use something else (I'm 
not going to include or implement audio codecs in D-RATS).  That all 
becomes a problem that is amplified by the number of OS's, etc.  I'll 
keep it in the back of my mind, but it's definitely not low-hanging fruit.

Please put all of these items on the request page, except for the first 
two.  Otherwise I'll forget them by this afternoon :)

-- 
Dan Smith
dsmith#danplanet.com, s/#/@/
www.danplanet.com
KK7DS