EICAS Message

[Hardy Heinlin]

I have no "<" in the EFIS font.

I think this double caret ">>" is the best eye catcher, yet aesthetically integrated, and also technically more flexible.

But it's up to you guys. Your controls :-)


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[Garry Richards]

These all fit into 16 characters:

1 RUNWAY 28L 28R becomes >>RWY 28L=28R

2 ARPT YABC YABD becomes >>APT YABC=YABD

3 YABC28LYABD28R becomes >>APT RWY OFFSET


I could additionally place a longer version of each of these on the VisualPSX status page:

1 PSX runway 28L: Offset applied for FSX runway 28R.

2 PSX airport YABC: Offset applied for FSX airport YABD.

3 would generate both of the above long messages.


What do you think? (This is like being back at alpha again!)

[John Golin]

I think those solutions would be very popular Garry!

You could even do:

>>APT RWY 22L22R

>>APT RWY 22 22R

>>APT RWY 01 01

?

[GerdD]

The RUNWAY 30 31 EICAS caution message was generated by VisualPSX. It is an undocumented, but delightful and useful feature and is one of three caution messages that VisualPSX could place on the upper EICAS display. Each is automatically removed after 10 seconds.

At my end this message is not automatically removed.
My destination was KSFO. There is no runway 30 or 31. Neither
in PSX nor in FSX. Or did I understand something wrong?

Thanks
Gerd

[martin]

Moi,

end user here, voting for something other than caret(s) in any number or orientation to mark "external" messages. For my feeling, it's a bit too close to the "real" caret (of genuine simulated RW messages).

So I like the Hardy's double slash best, people (when coders) might even associate that "//" means a "comment" as opposed to real "code".
It clearly isn't so subtle and doesn't "blend in" so well, but I think that's just the point (for these "external" messages) -- an advantage rather than a drawback.

The parentheses "(...)" would also be good.

Cheers,
Martin

[GerdD]

1 RUNWAY 28L 28R becomes >>RWY 28L=28R

2 ARPT YABC YABD becomes >>APT YABC=YABD

3 YABC28LYABD28R becomes >>APT RWY OFFSET

Looks good to me. Is very much self-explaining.

Gerd

[Hardy Heinlin]

I think there is no "=" in my EFIS font.


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[Phil Bunch]

Re not having an "=" symbol in the font database:

What about using an old FORTRAN computer language notation:

abc.EQ.def  instead pf abc = def

The text string ".EQ." means "equals" in this ancient but still used computer language.
----------------

[Am I the only one here who was exclusively educated to use FORTRAN (for scientific and engineering programming)?!]

[Ray_CYYZ]

Why not just keep it simple?

ADDON MSG

Tells you to look somewhere else.

No matter how you try and compress things to fit, sooner or later the meanings will get so blurred that no one understands them. You have tons of space externally to explain instead, just need to get people to know to go look there.

[martin]

[Am I the only one here who was exclusively educated to use FORTRAN (for scientific and engineering programming)?!]

Certainly not (yet), Phil -- it's just that no one will admit it anymore: it dates one so...  

Cheers,
Martin
(first language: SIMULA)

[Phil Bunch]

[Am I the only one here who was exclusively educated to use FORTRAN (for scientific and engineering programming)?!]

Certainly not (yet), Phil -- it's just that no one will admit it anymore: it dates one so...  

Cheers,
Martin
(first language: SIMULA)

Heck, Martin - according to Wikipedia, Fortran is very much alive and well:
---------------------------

Fortran and supercomputers

Since Fortran has been in use for more than fifty years, there is a vast body of Fortran in daily use throughout the scientific and engineering communities.[25] It is the primary language for some of the most intensive supercomputing tasks, such as astronomy, weather and climate modeling, numerical linear algebra LAPACK, numerical libraries IMSL, structural engineering, hydrological modeling, optimization, satellite simulators, computational fluid dynamics, computational chemistry, computational economics, animal breeding, plant breeding and computational physics. Even today, half a century later, many of the floating-point benchmarks to gauge the performance of new computer processors are still written in Fortran (e.g., CFP2006, the floating-point component of the SPEC CPU2006 benchmarks).

---------------------------

(A confession - I shamelessly extracted the above paragraph from Wikipedia's entry for FORTRAN, leaving out ALL the context about how so many supercomputer applications and libraries have moved to modern languages, apparently mostly C variants.  It was also interesting to read about the many changes that have been made to Fortran in an attempt to make it at least somewhat compatible with modern computer languages.)

[Garry Richards]

I think there is no "=" in my EFIS font.

OK I will change to (text).

What about using an old FORTRAN computer language notation:

abc.EQ.def  instead of abc = def

That requires an extra character. Too long.

[Am I the only one here who was exclusively educated to use FORTRAN (for scientific and engineering programming)?!]

No. I'm old enough too! Basic was based on FORTRAN so a lot of non-professional programmers learnt it as their only programming language. Microsoft eventually realised the potential market and created, then gradually expanded Visual Basic until it became an equal part of the Visual Studio languages. The VisualPSX suite is written in Visual Basic thanks to my FORTRAN beginnings.

Why not just keep it simple?

ADDON MSG

Tells you to look somewhere else.

No matter how you try and compress things to fit, sooner or later the meanings will get so blurred that no one understands them. You have tons of space externally to explain instead, just need to get people to know to go look there.

VisualPSX is often run minimised. The status messages are mainly there if a problem occurs, such as not connecting at startup. I wanted to have a quick way to inform the pilot(s) that the view out the window might not match the PSX path without them having to lose focus during a busy flight phase. In large cockpits the PSX outside view may not be available to the pilots for comparison as VisualPSX may be running on a computer that cannot be viewed by them.

This is a revised suggestion for the EICAS messages to make it evident that they are sim-related and are not normal EICAS messages and for them to be self-contained:

(RWY 28L 28R)

(APT YABC YABD)

(ABC28L YABD28R)

The last one omits the leading letter in the PSX airport name, which the pilots will know anyway, but still contains all the information in the allowable 16 characters.

[John Golin]

Why not just keep it simple?

ADDON MSG

Tells you to look somewhere else.

No matter how you try and compress things to fit, sooner or later the meanings will get so blurred that no one understands them. You have tons of space externally to explain instead, just need to get people to know to go look there.

This idea has some merit, but I'd rather be told the issue up front, not have to look for it, especially when the addons and complexity increases!

As Garry points out, the current feeling seems to be drifting toward an unofficial standard or enclosing the addon messages in brackets... in my case;



in Garry's

[martin]

Fortran is very much alive and well

That I know, Phil; I was thinking not so much about the language per se but about the people "exclusively educated to use FORTRAN".  

Cheers,
Martin