[Xastir] Two suggestions

[Luc Dore VA2KSH]

Hi folks,

Just wanted to suggest to the group two functions that I feel are 
missing in xastir.  Currently I'm running 1.3.1 on OSX (10.3.3) with 
shapelib and ImageMagick built in.

I downloaded from geobase (the Canadian geomatic website) the national 
road system, nameplaces for much of the areas I hang out in, all in 
shp; so with shapelib built in, all I have to do is 'reindex maps' and 
it works !  Very cool.  I did set the nameplace shp's to max zoom of 
128 so they don't clutter the screen when zoomed out.

I also set tigermaps to auto for the United States; works petty good... 
  Those maps are gorgeous.

So without more ado, here is suggestion 1: when right-clicking on the 
map, the zoom level sub-menu has some good choices; zoom out gives a 
view 2x the last level and zoom in cuts the level in half.  What about 
a new entry in that menu where the user can enter a specific zoom level 
(e.g. I want to enter a zoom level somewhere between 1024 and 8192).  I 
just want to cut the number of map iterations to get to a zoom level I 
want to have.

Suggestion 2: this one is more specific to the tigermaps.  I've set the 
timeout in the 'configure tigermap' menu to about 30 seconds; however 
I've seen xastir simply block there without any functionality for more 
than 2 minutes waiting on tigermaps (which makes me wonder about that 
time out slider).  What about a "cancel current map download" button.  
When zooming out of an area two or three times, where the tigermap 
isn't even displayed (e.g. northern Ontario), I'm stuck waiting on the 
tigermap to load.  The load is even application-wide as no other 
operations are accepted until the load is complete; the cursor is 
replaced with the "please wait" cursor.


Tell me what you think.

73

Luc D. -- VA2KSH
PGPid: 0x6A0DF068