Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: rbowman Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Re: (Excessive?) Complexity Date: 9 Feb 2025 19:43:14 GMT Lines: 39 Message-ID: References: <8b262a1f-507f-ef10-e4d3-a981dca5b7d1@example.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net TjbYAAcAH3+zlSqBX7nHMwj18PIURqfzE+6OgkTH4oxRGM9yTg Cancel-Lock: sha1:NHyhXTolhf20nxjdA5hauO9pCcI= sha256:JmJhbjch+roQKG9msrD8QtAh+zmFwgsHBMYTiQ1F9u0= User-Agent: Pan/0.160 (Toresk; ) Bytes: 3493 On Sun, 09 Feb 2025 11:32:45 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote: > I write data collection software. We have to handle data from all sorts > of different devices, some of which generate data whose format varies > only slightly from each other. Good luck talking the vendor into > changing his specs to something more standard (or, worst case, something > that is even syntactically correct). You can create a different program > for each layout, or you can write a front-end which resolves the > differences. At this point, designing code which can automatically > identify which format we're dealing with is a win, since it's one less > configuration setting that the customer can get wrong (and one less > headache for the support people). We've got one of those Swiss Army Knife apps for AVL (Automatic Vehicle Location). 25 years ago Trimble was the big name, at least in the emergency services world and the devices were fairly expensive. TAIP was their creation. https://kipdf.com/trimble-ascii-interface-protocol- taip_5ac59a361723ddd07a3fd408.html As time went on NMEA became more popular. https://www.gpsworld.com/what-exactly-is-gps-nmea-data/ Of course there were companies that use their own scheme including packed binary data. The actual interface might be UDP, TCP, or even serial for the old stuff. There are a bunch of configuration options but when the dust settles we get a latitude and longitude to show the vehicle on a map. Other times it makes more sense to have separate applications, reusing the common code. The problem with maintaining Swiss Army knives is trying to figure out what they're doing. I added a DMPP-2020 protocol to one that already had the functionality but the original programmer had obscured it so well I didn't recognize it.