Points of Interest

Displaying a tracklog using openstreetmap.org data (CC-by-SA)

Since the last post, I spent a couple of hours writing code for MoNav. The follwing list provides an overview over the lastest additions of mine:

• There are three map widgets in MoNav, the main map, the place chooser map, and the street choser map. As there was no central instance to control the zoom level, some nasty effects occured in case the user used the various zoom controls (F-keys, mouse wheel, zoom bar, zoom buttons). The zoom levels now are stored persistently for each individual map, and managed by one central method, setZoom(int). The code now provides reasonable default zoom values instead of using the maximum possible zoom at each startup.
• On the N900, the backlight now remains switched on as long as there is GPS data. Of course the user can still switch off the backlight using the hardware switch.
• MoNav centered the map only in routing mode. In the map view mode, the GPS position left the viewport without the map following its position. As a cyclist, it may well be that you don’t want to use routing, but want the map to follow the GPS position anyway. There is no preference option for this new feature. The map link to the GPS position gets lost as soon as the user pans the map. It gets set during application startup, when loading another map data set, the user selects “Goto Departure”, or the user selects “Goto Gps-Location”.
• In routing mode, the auto rotation now is optional. In case you are used to maps which always show north up, this option is for you.
• MoNav got GPS updates by the GPS subsystem every 5 seconds or so. Though the documentation of QGeoPositionInfoSource states that a default object gets updates each time there are any, calling setUpdateInterval(1000) clearly boosts the GPS performance of MoNav.
• The user can now switch track logging on and off via the preferences.
• The tracklog files created by MoNav now are proper UTF-8 encoded files, which JOSM no longer denies to consume.
• MoNav now is capable of rendering the tracklog in red colour (see screenshot), which is a much sought-after feature for pedestrians, hikers and cyclists.