[drats_users] Pictures

[Dan Smith]

> OK, so I sent a picture from one computer to the other.  The
> original was 1136 KB, and the compressed file that got sent ends up
> as 16.8 KB (attached).  It seemed to be going fairly smoothly,
> considering the repeater I'm using is 60 miles away, and I am
> cross-banding back to myself.  At 99% sent, there were 10 error
> blocks, and I believe that's reasonable considering the distance.
> But then it sat there, and did nothing for several minutes.
> Something was hitting the hard disk on the sending computer, and
> some communications program was taking around 10% of the processor
> power (Task Manager information).  Then D-RATS finally gave the
> message of "Transfer Interrupted".

Okay, did you get a debug log?  A log from both ends would be good,
because it's possible that maybe the receiving end unpacked the final
file and didn't like it and then failed to send back the final ack of
some sort.  The debug log will tell us that.

> I then re-sent the same picture with the same compression, and it
> completed fairly quickly.  This is almost an identical issue I saw
> last weekend when I was in the middle of nowhere....  D-RATS
> appeared to have died.

Even if you hit the exact same settings on the picture tool, I'm not
sure it's guaranteed to be the exact same file, and thus might now
come out the other end properly.  Was the picture viewable on the
other side?

Oh, maybe this is the picture you attached?  Cool :)

The resume is happening the same way it was on 0.2 right now because I
don't have the UI bits in place to make it better.  The plan is to
allow you to go to the failed transfer in the Event Log tab, right
click and say "try again" or "attempt resume".  This would avoid
pulling the picture tool up and would just resume the exact temporary
file that you were sending last time.  I just haven't added it yet.

> b) Both D-RATS computer's Chat windows are filled with "Now Online:
> Online (D-RATS)".  It seems as if it must be part of the handshake,
> but it doesn't seem necessary in the Chat window (unless it was
> already decided to do it that way).

Yep, I don't like it either, but I know that a certain group of people
will want to see it there because they're very used to it in 0.2.

What you're seeing is me moving the "online" and "offline" messages
from being regular chat traffic to being status advertisements.  This
is nice because it helps keep the stations list up to date.  It's
*also* nice because now you can go into preferences under "chat" and
say you don't want to see those :)

If you disable that, you'll still get status updates from people, but
you won't get all the messages in the chat window about it.

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