[aprssig] requesting icons

[Robert Bruninga]

> when I hike I carry a D7g with a Deluo lite 
> attached and would like my emblem to be a 
> hiker, not a jogger.

According to the APRS symbols web page aprs.org/symbols.html, As
of Oct 07, the "jogger" symbol was expanded to have any of 36
overlay definitions, and the name "jogger" was replaced by
"human or person".  Actually, it never was a jogger, other than
the original APRSdos had the user select symbols by a letter.
And J was available, so the human with legs was called the
"Jogger" for easy one-key menu selection.  For example, that
symbol with an "S" overlay is now defined as a Skier, B for
Baby-on-board, H for Hiker, R for runner, J for Jogger etc. And
there can be up to a total of 26 different humanoid symbols if
authors choose to implement them.  But if they do not, then
these added symbols may show up as a wall-cloud!

As steve says:
> Icons are not sent on the air, but are 
> stored in every program and device. The icon 
> set on dozens of different clients need to be 
> updated (some never will be)

>> A second emblem... would be the GeoCaching emblem.
>> The square with the 4 colors... a lot of hams do 
>> Geocache. I beacon our event... About 150 or so
>> people show up, many hams. 

Actually, I think this is a good suggestion because many APRS
hams are involved in Geocaching.  But as steve said:

> ...there are very few unassigned icons, so 
> any assignment must be of something of near 
> universal interest to APRS.

But in October 2007, in APRS addendum 1.2 proposal the APRS
symbol set was greatly expanded by proposing that all alternate
symbols can have an "overlay" byte, not just the original 15 or
so as limited by WinAPRS.  SO now there are hundreds of
combinations.

Looking at existing symbols, there is one that is very close.
It is the alternate "Z" symbol which was painted in APRSdos
(anyway) as a square with four quadrants.  The colors of the
quadrants were green, blue, yellow, red clockwise from the upper
left.  I do not know what it looks like on other clients.  You
can see it on the APRSdos examnples on the web page above.  If
there are no objections, I'll sugggest that the "Z" symbol with
an overlay letter of "G" could define a Geocaching symbol.  

The overlay "G" does not need to be displayed, because in this
case, the combination is being uniquely defined.  There are many
such new definitions. See
www.aprs.org/symbols/symbols-new.txt


But as steve said, there are too few clinet programs being
actively maintained anymore by their authors and so until they
are updated, the new symbols will not show.

> Hardware devices like the Kenwood radios 
> likely will never get updated.

Fortunately, the D710 is field programmable so future updates
are not impossible.

Bob, Wb4APR