[chirp_users] CHIRP Portable App
Any move toward making CHIRP a portable App ? That would be a great option.
Thanks for the great software
Robert WA6IJD
Any move toward making CHIRP a portable App ?
I assume you mean for one of the flat, keyboardless, heavy-on-the-cool-factor, light-on-the-features computers that are all the rage these days? The tablet fad tends to generate rants from me, so here goes:
You won't see it from me for at least the following reasons:
1. CHIRP is written in Python, which lets development proceed at an incredibly rapid pace. None of the popular tablet platforms support running apps in this language. It would be a total rewrite. 2. The environments for both of the popular ones are fairly specific to their platforms, meaning a rewrite to either would not be useful for the other, and in most cases, not very useful to desktop users either. 3. Most of the devices (and especially the most popular one) is so limited that it doesn't have USB host support, which would be required for attaching wired serial port. Bluetooth serial support is "neat" but fraught with so many potential timing issues it's hard to consider it an option. Many of the radios (yaesus especially are extremely timing-sensitive and the higher latency of a bluetooth connection would be difficult to optimize. 3. I don't really like tablets. I can browse the web on one, but just about everything else I do with a computer lends itself to a more rich interface than what I can do with my greasy, stubby fingers. I don't really understand the current mainstream fascination for the devices, I don't own one, and I'm certainly not planning a rewrite of the entire code base in order to support one.
I'll let the other devs speak up here in case one of them is planning to rewrite the 28,758 lines of code in the main repository for either or both of the two dominant tablet platforms. CHIRP is open-source so anyone wishing to undertake such an endeavor is more than welcome :)
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On 08/12/2012 09:46 PM, Dan Smith wrote:
Any move toward making CHIRP a portable App ?
I assume you mean for one of the flat, keyboardless, heavy-on-the-cool-factor, light-on-the-features computers that are all the rage these days? The tablet fad tends to generate rants from me, so here goes:
I imagine it's more likely he meant a self-contained package meant to run on a usb stick ala http://portableapps.com/
Which Chirp already basically is....
- -Zero
You won't see it from me for at least the following reasons:
- CHIRP is written in Python, which lets development proceed at
an incredibly rapid pace. None of the popular tablet platforms support running apps in this language. It would be a total rewrite. 2. The environments for both of the popular ones are fairly specific to their platforms, meaning a rewrite to either would not be useful for the other, and in most cases, not very useful to desktop users either. 3. Most of the devices (and especially the most popular one) is so limited that it doesn't have USB host support, which would be required for attaching wired serial port. Bluetooth serial support is "neat" but fraught with so many potential timing issues it's hard to consider it an option. Many of the radios (yaesus especially are extremely timing-sensitive and the higher latency of a bluetooth connection would be difficult to optimize. 3. I don't really like tablets. I can browse the web on one, but just about everything else I do with a computer lends itself to a more rich interface than what I can do with my greasy, stubby fingers. I don't really understand the current mainstream fascination for the devices, I don't own one, and I'm certainly not planning a rewrite of the entire code base in order to support one.
I'll let the other devs speak up here in case one of them is planning to rewrite the 28,758 lines of code in the main repository for either or both of the two dominant tablet platforms. CHIRP is open-source so anyone wishing to undertake such an endeavor is more than welcome :)
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I imagine it's more likely he meant a self-contained package meant to run on a usb stick ala http://portableapps.com/
Perhaps. I get a lot of queries about running it (and other things) on tablets, so I assumed that's was the intent. I surely didn't mean to come off as ranting against Robert himself :)
Which Chirp already basically is....
Yeah, CHIRP is highly portable right now. Both in that it runs on all three desktop platforms, but also in that it runs without needing to be installed. If you're a windows user, grab the .zip instead of the .exe and you can run it right from its own directory, on a USB stick or anywhere else.
On Aug 12, 2012, at 20:46, Dan Smith wrote:
- Most of the devices (and especially the most popular one) is so
limited that it doesn't have USB host support, which would be required for attaching wired serial port. Bluetooth serial support is "neat" but fraught with so many potential timing issues it's hard to consider it an option. Many of the radios (yaesus especially are extremely timing-sensitive and the higher latency of a bluetooth connection would be difficult to optimize.
not that it negates any of the other quite reasonable points you make, but there are actually serial adaptors out for the iPad. we've got some for work. if anyone else wants to tackle porting this, it might actually work.
personally, I'm more for porting d-rats. much simpler (not so device specific) and would be handy for emcomm. however, not being a real programmer and not having any python experience (short of reading bits and pieces of d-rats and chirp), I'm stuck waiting on someone else to do it :-)
-debbie
participants (4)
-
Dan Smith -
Debbie Fligor -
Richard Farina -
Robert R.