diff doc/User-phone-tools @ 450:b5235f8240b9

doc/User-phone-tools: update for SMS PDU mode working on all targets
author Mychaela Falconia <falcon@freecalypso.org>
date Thu, 07 Feb 2019 21:22:27 +0000
parents b1864e3f8fb4
children a43c5dc251dc
line wrap: on
line diff
--- a/doc/User-phone-tools	Wed Jan 16 01:21:29 2019 +0000
+++ b/doc/User-phone-tools	Thu Feb 07 21:22:27 2019 +0000
@@ -74,7 +74,8 @@
   there is no dedicated UART available for a standard AT command interface, but
   there is a hack that allows a limited subset of AT commands to be passed over
   the RVTMUX binary packet interface provided by the running FreeCalypso GSM fw.
-  Our fcup-* tools can work with such targets to a limited extent.
+  Our fcup-* tools can work with this alternate target interface option and
+  thereby support these crippled targets.
 
 The AT-over-RVTMUX mechanism was originally invented back in 2015 as a
 development aid, and was never intended for production use or to support any
@@ -86,17 +87,11 @@
 version of our AT-over-RVTMUX hack that allows longer strings to be sent in
 pieces, and the present version of our FC User Phone Tools suite will send the
 strings it generates via this extended mechanism whenever they exceed the old
-254 character limit.  However, please be aware that FC firmware for Mot C1xx
-phones is still a purely unsupported offering for the sake of the community, it
-is NOT our main project direction, and this fw configuration does *not* receive
-the same level of development support and testing as our FCDEV3B modem product.
-A test of SMS sending functionality via the newly extended AT-over-RVTMUX
-interface on a Mot C139 phone using our current (as of this writing) 20190109
-firmware revealed that something is still broken, and we do not currently have
-a business case to justify allocating more developer time to investigate those
-issues.  In contrast, our FCDEV3B modem running our current 20190112 firmware
-is rock solid, and all SMS functions work flawlessly going through the standard
-AT command interface on the dedicated UART.
+254 character limit.  The new mechanism works correctly starting with the
+20190128 firmware release for modem products and the 20190129 fw release for
+Mot C1xx phones, thus when the present version of FC User Phone Tools is used
+to communicate with our current firmwares, both target interface options provide
+equivalent functionality on all supported targets.
 
 All fcup-* tools take the following common command line options for selecting
 the AT command target interface:
@@ -145,11 +140,12 @@
 user periodically transfers them to her larger host computer, simultaneously
 deleting them from the SIM storage to reclaim the limited space.  The retrieval
 of stored SMS from FreeCalypso GSM devices is accomplished with our fcup-smdump
-utility; unlike SMS sending/writing, this operation works exactly the same
-whether the FC GSM device offers a full-featured AT command interface or only
-AT over RVTMUX.  SMS retrieval is always done in PDU mode, and the output from
-fcup-smdump contains raw SMS PDUs in the form of long hex strings.  A separate
-utility called sms-pdu-decode then does what its name says.
+utility; like all SMS operations with the current tools+firmware combination,
+this operation works exactly the same whether the FC GSM device offers a full-
+featured AT command interface or only AT over RVTMUX.  SMS retrieval is always
+done in PDU mode, and the output from fcup-smdump contains raw SMS PDUs in the
+form of long hex strings.  A separate utility called sms-pdu-decode then does
+what its name says.
 
 The intended mode of usage is something like this:
 
@@ -223,16 +219,9 @@
 Composing and sending outgoing SMS
 ==================================
 
-[2019 update: this section has not yet been updated for the new reality that
- sending maximum-length SMS in PDU mode over RVTMUX is now possible, but please
- see the earlier notes about this functionality still not working quite right
- when tested on a Mot C139 phone.  Until further updates, please stick to using
- PDU mode over the classic AT command channel over the dedicated UART on
- FCDEV3B hardware.]
-
-When used with a FreeCalypso GSM device that offers the full AT command
-interface (currently only the FCDEV3B modem), the primary SMS sending/writing
-tool fcup-smsend offers the following capabilities:
+When used in the default PDU mode (which now works on all targets with our
+current firmware and tools), the primary SMS sending/writing tool fcup-smsend
+offers the following capabilities:
 
 * Sending outgoing messages in either GSM7 or UCS-2 encoding;
 * Sending either single or long (concatenated) SMS;
@@ -247,11 +236,12 @@
 PDU mode, which works great when the GSM device provides a proper AT command
 interface.  However, when a message of maximum or near-maximum length is being
 submitted to the modem in PDU mode, the hex string that needs to be sent is
-longer than what the crippled AT-over-RVTMUX mechanism can handle, thus if you
-are using crippled Motorola or Pirelli hardware, you need to give the -t option
-to fcup-smsend or fcup-sendmult, telling these tools to use text mode instead
-of PDU mode on the AT command interface.  In this text (-t) mode the following
-restrictions apply:
+quite long, and at the time when our FC User Phone Tools were first designed
+and written, our AT-over-RVTMUX mechanism could not handle such long strings.
+Because we sought to have at least limited SMS sending and writing support for
+crippled Motorola and Pirelli targets, we also implemented text mode support in
+fcup-smsend and fcup-smsendmult, enabled with the -t option.  In this text (-t)
+mode the following restrictions apply:
 
 * Only single SMS can be sent, not concatenated;
 * Only GSM7-encoded messages can be sent, not UCS-2;
@@ -259,12 +249,11 @@
 * ASCII characters [\]^ and {|}~ won't be sent correctly - GSM 07.05 text mode
   drops them.
 
-But if you have to use FreeCalypso on crippled hardware, the -t option does
-allow you to send GSM7-encoded SMS of the full maximum length of 160 characters.
-If you attempt to use PDU mode (no -t option) with an AT-over-RVTMUX back-end
-(-R option), the send or write operation will fail if the generated PDU is
-longer than 127 octets; the length of the generated PDU depends not only on the
-message body length, but also on the length of the destination address.
+Now that we have extended our AT-over-RVTMUX mechanism to support longer strings
+and gained full support for PDU mode on all targets, the above -t mode is no
+longer necessary for any use case, as the default PDU mode is a proper superset
+in functionality.  However, support for this -t mode has been retained, as
+removing software functionality for no good reason is not the way of FOSS.
 
 The invokation syntax is as follows:
 
@@ -358,22 +347,25 @@
 
 -t, -u, -U, -w and -W command line options are unchanged from fcup-smsend.
 
-If you have to use FreeCalypso on crippled hardware, fcup-smsendmult -t can be
-a viable alternative to sending concatenated SMS, as each message in the batch
-can be up to the maximum limit of 160 characters.
+This fcup-smsendmult method of sending batched SMS was originally envisioned as
+an alternative to concatenated SMS for crippled hw targets that couldn't support
+sending SMS in PDU mode, but that limitation has now been lifted.  Because we
+do not remove already-implemented functionality for no good reason, the tool
+currently remains in search of new potential use cases.
 
 fcup-smsendpdu
 ==============
 
 This utility sends out SMS PDUs that have been prepared externally; it only
-works in PDU mode, which limits its usefulness to high-end FreeCalypso hardware
-with a full AT command interface.  The PDUs to be sent out are read from stdin,
-one long hex string PDU per line; one can send either a single message or a
-batch.  Because the destination address and all content details are encoded in
-the PDU, the tool does not care if the messages are going to the same recipient
-or to different recipients, nor does it care if they constitute a concatenated
-SMS transmission or not.  -w and -W options work the same way as in fcup-smsend
-and fcup-smsendmult.
+works in PDU mode - originally it was limited to high-end FreeCalypso hardware
+with a full AT command interface, but now we've got PDU mode working on all
+targets.  The PDUs to be sent out are read from stdin, one long hex string PDU
+per line; one can send either a single message or a batch.  Because the
+destination address and all content details are encoded in the PDU, the tool
+does not care if the messages are going to the same recipient or to different
+recipients, nor does it care if they constitute a concatenated SMS transmission
+or not.  -w and -W options work the same way as in fcup-smsend and
+fcup-smsendmult.
 
 fcup-smwrite
 ============