Re: [gpsd-dev] Feature request (very long, sorry about that)

[Eric S. Raymond]

Roy Barkas <address@hidden>:
> My proposal is to add a feature to gpsd that will allow metadata to be
> transparently passed through gpsd so that it can appear on the translated
> output
> along with the AIVDM data.
> 
> One way to do this would be to allow the gpsd input to take an alternative
> form in addition to the current text string format.
> For instance, gpsd could interpret an AIVDM string in the way it currently
> does, or alternatively it could accept a json string
> that contained (for example)
> 
> {
>     "payload":"the AIVDM string",
>     "datetime":"2013-01-23 23:00:04"
>     "satellite":"24B"
> }

You're overcomplicating things, I think.  Nothing prevents us from
simply adding the JSON for the metadata to the AIVDM string as an
additional field.  The only new gpsd rule would be that if you see a
trailing field beginning with '{' you treat it as JSON to be passed
through to the client and ignore additional field separators until the
balancing }.

>  It might be wise to enforce some naming convention on the added data
> elements to avoid collisions with native
>  gpsd names - perhaps the names could require 2 starting underscores - i.e.
> "__datetime" or some such mechanism.

A detail.

None of this would be difficult.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>