1 screenshot vs 4 screenshots
I've seen this effect time and time again over the years with the computer work I've done right across the board.... If you include an example screenshot, the reader becomes hyperfocused on the screenshot and deprecates* all my words or the plead to look at the big picture of what I am trying to say.
Case and point. There are 3-4 (Depending on how you count it) versions of the Iridium toolkit in use.
Two of them are not compatible with the the other two in many ways. Two of them are annoyingly close.
Every feeder will calmy state they are using 'the latest' and the version can be hard for the feeder to find.
Updating the feeder is very tricky for most - then you have 2 docker versions floating around which do stuff with acars router (or not).
The result of that mess for me is that my site has code on the Iridium feeder input that tries to auto detect and convert all 4 versions into one usable version for the site. (I really should annoy Kevin more and find out how the black puma of ACARS - airframes.io - handles this mess?).
Should have I included 4 screenshots of the 4 different Iridium data types my sites sees?
Does anyone other than me care about the 4 types?
Is having screenshots of all 4 types important to the core question of should I include hyphens or not in the site search and table displays on the site?
What is my point of all this? I included a screen shot of a 'tail' and no hyphen and so some DMs pointed out how they see 'reg' and hyphens in their iridium data.
The core problem is the same across the board, be it L-Band, C-Band, VDL or HFDL.... I just don't know how to write a blog that explains in full detail every detail that I fight with on the site to make it both accurate and useful for every single #avgeek in the world.
I started this blog because I hate YouTube and am resisting the loud and long calls for me to make YouTubes about ACARS and using the site.
I also was/am not excited about YouTube comments. I don't like the fact that you need to have an account to comment and it is not really setup to have a dialog with commenters.
3 blogs in and I'm wondering if this is the right platform, or perhaps I am just the wrong guy to be doing this.
In closing, re-reading this blog makes it sound like I am complaining about the comments and DMs. Im not, its just that I put time into asking a question and I get comments and DMs about the screenshots and nothing on the question. This is starting to sound like one of my live stream fireside rants. Something I wanted to ovoid.
Death to the hyphen. Long live the hyphen!
*Used in the software sense here: usable but regarded as obsolete and best avoided.
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