xcall - Packet Radio Program for X/GTK+

xcall

xcall is a packet radio program for X, written with the GTK library. It can be used for AX.25, NET/ROM and Rose connections. Xcall includes support for DX clusters.

After startup, you make a connection by selecting:

Host->Connection

from the menu. You will be presented with a dialog with an entry where the port and remote callsign should be entered. When connected, the top area will display the received frames and you can type the text to be transmitted into the one-line entry at the bottom.

xcall will respond with the message '*** Cannot connect to <callsign>: Time-out during connection setup' when a timeout occurs. The timeout value can be set in the preferences dialog.

If you think the connection-setup is taking too long, you can terminate it by selecting Host->Connection again. The same menu entry is also used for disconnecting.

Xcall is able to record the current session into a file by selecting:

Host->Recording

from the menu. If you enter a filename without a path, the session will be recorded to ~/<download directory>/filename. Data will be appended to any previously created file with the same name. The download directory can be set in the preferences dialog.

Recording can be stopped by selecting the same menu again.

Xcall forks a copy when trying to set up a connection. This copy is automatically deleted after the connection is either successful or an error has occured.

Xcall will remember the last 20 lines you have entered into the transmit line. The lines will be saved into ~/.xcall/history and recalled the next time you start xcall. History is also saved for the connection and the recording dialogs.

When you navigate through the menu, you will find a preferences dialog under settings.

The General page in this dialog can be used for setting the download directory, timeout and saving of window size and position. The Display page allows you to change font, colors and widget appearance of the receive window. The AX.25 page contains information for AX.25 port settings, read from the proc filesystem. These settings can be changed by echoing a digit (as root) to the proc entry. For example, setting a port called 'bpq0' to AX.25 Extended mode can be done with the following line:

echo 1> /proc/sys/net/ax25/bpq0/ax25_default_mode.

More information on the proc filesystem parameters can be found in the AX25-HOWTO.

The last page in the preferences dialog can be used to turn on DX cluster support. When enabled, dx spots will appear colorized. For bands between 1.8 and 30 Mc/s, you can change the color.

You can use the PgUp/PgDn key to scroll the top window. Hitting the Up/Dn arrow will show the previously/next transmitted text in the one-line entry. The Alt-key will navigate the menu.

On startup, xcall will read ~/.xcall/xcallrc, when present. This file can be used to change the appearance of xcall. Included in the distribution is a file called sample.SGI.xcallrc with an 'SGI' like theme and sample.blue.xcallrc with a blue theme. Copy this files to xcallrc to try it out.

If you have set up language support correctly on your system and if you speak the Dutch or French language, you can enjoy xcall in your native langauge by setting the environment variable LANG. Set it to either 'nl_NL' or 'fr_FR'.

Both xcall and this manual page were written by Joop Stakenborg <pg4i@amsat.org>. Parts of xcall were taken from call.c from the ax25-apps sources by different authors.