[aprssig] New APRS Client, Request for Developers

[Ben Jackson]

Do you pine for the nice days of APRSdos when men were men and spent 
hours slogging through configuration files? Are you without a nice 
project and just dying to cut your teeth on an APRS client you can try 
to modify for your needs? Are you finding it frustrating when everything 
works out of the box on UI-View? Tired of all those snooty Linux 
developers having all the fun coding their own APRS client? Then this 
post might be just for you :-)

Over the past month, I've been messing about with a APRS client for 
Windows of my own making, OpenAPRS. OpenAPRS was initially started 
because I was bored, and wanted to see if I could work something out 
that could interpret position reports. After showing it off to a few 
people I knew, I wholeheartedly got the response of "Hey, you should 
release this." So, I am.

OpenAPRS is a Open Source APRS client written in C# that uses 
Microsoft's .Net 2.0 libraries. As of right now, It's in what I would 
call a "usable" state. Working in basic areas, wholly lacking in others. 
Thusly, I am not releasing this to the general public /just/ yet.

However, what I am asking for is two fold:

* Developers. I can't be the only APRS guy who codes in C#, right? 
Anyone want to help?

* Community Input. There a feature you've been longing for in APRS 
clients? Now is your chance to get it. Just speak up! Right now, the one 
person I've been discussing this with, has requested easily integrated 
topology data, which I'm working on Other then that, the slate is clean.

Currently, the most official thing I have for a home page is the 
sourceforge project page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openaprs. I've 
also set up two mailing lists: openaprs-developers at lists.sourceforge.net 
and openaprs-users at lists.sourceforge.net. I don't expect the -users list 
to be too active for a bit. :D

I've just now posted the code into CVS, so the curious can start pulling 
the source code down and poking at it in what I hope will be a few hours 
(SourceForge seems slow today). I coded in in Visual Studio 2005 
Standard Edition, but I would assume that the (free) Express Editions 
will work as well. Let me know if otherwise.

Questions? Comments? Rotten Tomatoes?

				~Ben

-- 
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