[Xastir-dev] first cut at geocoder

[Tom Russo]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 04:24:18PM -0800, a Mr. Richard Feyler of Fort Lee, New Jersey <archer at eskimo.com> writes 'Dear Rosanne Rosannadanna':
> In case some of you haven't noticed yet, Xastir can now find a
> street address and center the map at/near that location.  This new
> feature should be available via the anon CVS server sometime later
> today.  You see some new files show up when you do a "cvs update".
> Thanks Derrick!

Yes, thanks Derrick!

I've been toying with this functionality a bit today.  I like it.

I also went ahead and built the geocoder iteself and ran it over all
the New Mexico TIGER/Line files there are, so I have a much smaller
(11MB) file I can use on my laptop for finding local addresses instead
of the full deal.  I like.  Unfortunately, I don't the 3MB I'd need
for the compressed version left on my personal web site, but or I'd
put it in shape_web as I've done with all my shapefile hackage.

> Now... What kind of GUI functionality do we want?  Perhaps make a
> big line with an arrow from the current location to the found
> address, so that you can drive to it?  Give me some ideas here!

Well, I think that there should be several options.  I sometimes use
the GOTO function on my GPS to go to a waypoint and make use of the
resulting "map" page, and so I don't agree that a simple line from the
current point is necessarily useless clutter, but I also wouldn't want
it to be a behavior I couldn't switch off.  I can also think of other
ways I'd want to see it.  Perhaps this should be configurable just as
is done for filtering station info.

Ideas?  Hmmmm.

  -  Instead of centering the display upon clicking "Locate address," bring up
     a "found it!" dialog with the lat/lon of the address and some
     buttons to choose what to do next

     * GOTO Address (display arrow from current location to address, and 
       update it continuously as we update current position, just like a GPS)
     * Create Object (bring up a create/modify object dialog with the address'
       lat/lon alread filled in).  
       = At the same time, you might also modify the
        dialog for create/modify object to have a checkbox for "do not
        transmit" and an associated flag internally to flag individual
        objects as being for display only, not transmission as APRS objects.
        That would kill more than one bird with the same stone (e.g. making it
        possible to use objects for some stuff in SAR that you wouldn't
        necessarily want transmitted without having to completely disable
        object transmitting)
     * Center display on address

That's all that springs to mind at the moment.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY     SAR502  DM64ux         http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://www.qsl.net/~km5vy/
 "It is inhumane in my opinion to force people who have a genuine
  medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently
  view it as some kind of recreational activity."  -- Dave Barry