[Xastir] OSM offline

[James Ewen]

On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 11:52 PM, Thomas Sprinzing <thomas at sprinzing.org> wrote:

> I've had a look at the meerkator webpage. Frankly, i don't need another map
> editing piece of software on my computer.

You don't need Merkaartor on your computer... I was using Merkaartor
as an example, or rather a sample of what  *COULD* be done with the
Xastir interface, and rendering.

> What most of us want, and that was written somewhere here more than often,
> is a way to use xastir with downloaded, half-decent, but nicely scaling maps
> in a way comprehensible for people that do not hack unix kernels when they
> are bored, but switch on the radio and rag chew.

Hey, did you read my initial post? That's what I said. Merkaartor is a
program that takes downloaded raw OSM data, and displays them as VERY
decent nicely scaling maps. It does so in a way comprehensible to
normal people using the style settings. The style editor is written in
a way that mere mortals can understand and modify.

My suggestion to grab Merkaartor was to allow one to see just how
nicely the maps are rendered by the program, and how user friendly the
style settings are to read and edit. There is no need to grab
Merkaartor to use maps from Merkaartor in Xastir. Merkaartor does not
create maps, nor tiles. It won't do anything useful for Xastir at all.
It was just a pointer to a real world example of how the Xastir
rendering engine and dbfawk files could be upgraded to make things
look nicer, and easier to use.

> Xastir just lost me when
> i read somewhere that i need to install some gis software to find out about
> the content of the shapefiles, in order to learn and write a half-baked
> ugly-looking dbfawk.

Hence my suggestion to maybe have the authors of Xastir have a look at
how Merkaartor makes that process much more user friendly, and in the
process, makes a much nicer looking end product.

> Pulling maps online doesn't pull it for me either - nor should it do so for
> all the emcomms. In the case you need the stuff, the net is down or
> unavialable, so get the act together and have your maps on your computer.

Which is why I'm suggesting making the shapefile or OSM data rendering
process better and easier to use.

> Rendering maps to bitmaps with merkaartor and using them with xastir doesn't
> pull it for me either. You are always at the wrong zoom level, with display
> resolution unequal to rendered map resolution. Effect is either lost detail
> due to pixelation, or lost detail due to averaging between pixels. You could
> waste lots of disk space though by rendering the map in different zoom
> levels. But then, how is ist managed?

First off, as stated before, Merkaartor does not render map tiles.
Merkaartor takes raw data and parses it through a style sheet type of
idea, and draws the resultant image to the screen. This is the same
process that Xastir uses. Xastir grabs the raw data (shapefile),
parses it through a style sheet (dbfawk), and draws the resultant
image to the screen. Both programs do the same thing, taking raw data
and making a map on the screen. Merkaartor then uses that resultant
image to allow the user to edit OSM data, whereas Xastir uses the
resultant image to display APRS information upon it.

I'm not sure why it is so complicated to figure out that I am not
suggesting that Xastir should become an OSM data editor, a word
processor, nor even a hair stylist... I am simply saying that
Merkaartor has a couple subroutines that do a similar task that is
currently being done in Xastir. That task is taking raw data and
rendering it on screen as a map. Leverage that concept and make Xastir
a better program.

> Why not use the built-in rendering engine, and have xastir interpret the
> shapefiles, and draw nice maps. It was possible before, it should be now.

It still does render maps. I haven't heard anyone say that the
shapefile capabilities have been deprecated. In fact, that was what
drew me to Xastir in the first place. Raster maps are a poor
substitute in my opinion. I am suggesting that the existing built-in
shapefile rendering engine might be able to be made better, and the
routines used by Merkaartor might be a source of routines that already
do a good job. Why reinvent the wheel. The style sheet concept and the
style editor from Merkaartor could make creating or modifying a dbfawk
file in Xastir into a manageable task for a normal person.

> I rest my case: it's probably an hour and a half for the guy who created
> dbfawk to create a half-decent, commented dbfawk for osm shapefiles. Put it
> in the wiki, or better, put it in the install package as well. Done.

So, you state that you would like to have better looking maps, and you
hate the existing esoteric dbfawk files, but then sum it up by giving
up and just asking someone else to create a dbfawk file that may or
may not make things look the way you like, and even at that not have
the ability to render the final image in a visually pleasing manner?

I obviously have awoken the Platformists out there with this concept.
I'm amazed that people would argue against having a piece of software
that could be used across multiple platforms. There's nothing that
Xastir does that requires a specific microprocessor, or hardware
component. I'm pretty certain that there are word processing programs
on Windows, Mac, and Unix... Probably even some that share a common
code base. Maybe something like Open Office's word processor. There
are a number of cross platform programs out there that don't suffer a
horribly debilitating loss of functionality just because they run on
multiple platforms.

I don't pretend to know what it would take to make a program cross
platform compatible. All I am saying is that there are some people out
there that are making programs that are cross platform compatible. It
would be advantageous in my opinion to use tools and processes that
made the program cross platform compatible when working on Xastir 2.0.

James
VE6SRV