@ai6yr@ampledata Vara seems to be Windows-only which makes it a non-starter for me. I wrote a packet radio stack back in the day (just because) - all I needed was a radio, world-chip hardware modem and my software. All I needed as the AX25 specs.
This isn't we should go back to "the good old days" - I really like my IC-7300 with USB connected computer - but to note that the layering of software adds complexity and this makes things more and more opaque, with more points of failure. This especially bad if there's proprietary software in there.
Not sure what we do about it really, but I'm not the only one who are finding simple protocols/and systems appealing: there's #gemini and #nex (nex.nightfall.city/nex/info/sp… ). Having something to sit them on top of for HF that's a bit more open would be great.
Now back to by 1000+ line config.org for Emacs! Somehow this isn't inconsistent as with #orgmode nothing's hidden - everything's in text files ...