[Xastir] OSM offline

[Jeremy McDermond]

On Jul 7, 2010, at 11:44 PM, James Ewen wrote:

> 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.

For the record, I don't have any issues with this suggestion.  In fact, I think it's a fairly good one seeming how dbfawk files, to be fair, are pretty opaque.  Awk was always more of a programmer-level tool, not really a user-level tool.

> 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.

If you're referring to me, I'm not necessarily arguing against it.  I'm merely saying that it needs to be handled carefully to make sure that it's not a crappy app, and I've seen very few apps that are handled carefully.  I don't think I'm really "platformist."  I've worked on most of the UNIXes under the sun, VMS, OS/400, the Mac (both flavors), am an MCSE, and manage Cisco IOS boxes for a living.

> There's nothing that
> Xastir does that requires a specific microprocessor, or hardware
> component.

There's more to being a truly good citizen on the platform other than just running instructions on the processor.  Take a look at my Xastir packaging.  There are issues with where files are supposed to live by standard on each of the platforms.  Would Windows users be happy looking for c:\usr\local\share\xastir to get all of their map files?  Would Windows users be happy having to install CygWin/X on their machines to be able to run a program?  These are the sorts of considerations you have to employ when trying to make a port good.  Right now, if you count CygWin and Apple's X11 implementation, Xastir is fully cross platform.  I would argue that that's not a desirable way of being cross-platform.

> I'm pretty certain that there are word processing programs
> on Windows, Mac, and Unix... Probably even some that share a common
> code base.

Well, the most popular word processor on the Mac is called "Microsoft Word."  Being a proprietary app, I can't tell you how much code it shares with the Windows version, but I can make some guesses from a few facts.

1)  The Mac version has had the Visual Basic for Applications layer ripped out from it.  So there's no VBA code commonality.
2)  The interface layout is completely different between the two versions.
3)  The Mac version is released in a staggered manner with the Windows version.  The Mac version sometimes releases features before they appear in Windows.  Sometimes the other way around.
4)  The Mac version doesn't originate in the Office group, it originates from the "Mac Business Unit."

This tends to indicate to me that some pieces of it are shared, but that they're not on a common code base.  Microsoft Word is actually an okay app on a Mac, unlike some of the other cross-platform programs I see out there.  But I think this is partially because Microsoft realizes that things have to be different for different platforms in some places.

> Maybe something like Open Office's word processor.

And OpenOffice is an example of a poorly written cross-platform app.  They invent new UI components for standard OS components that don't work the same.

> 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 think I said that there was a "horrible loss of functionality."  The functions are still there, it's just horrible usability.  If you count DosBox, The original APRS DOS is cross-platform to Linux, Mac, and Windows.  Would you want to use that interface every day?

A car company could make all right-hand drive models of cars because it would be more "cross platform."  It's not necessarily something I would want to drive on North American roads.

> I don't pretend to know what it would take to make a program cross
> platform compatible.

I've looked cursorily at the Xastir code from the standpoint of making it use the native Mac Aqua environment instead of X11.  There's a significant amount of the code that would have to be rewritten because the graphics toolkits on the platforms are significantly different.  As silly as it sounds, it might be better to write the rendering in OpenGL, because that provides some commonality.

The real question is how much code is really independent of the OS implementation, and how much work is going to be required to abstract that.  What might be better is to abstract OS independent code into an xastirlib so that programs for multiple platforms can leverage all of the work in Xastir.

> 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.

Again, I recall saying that a cross platform app is certainly better than nothing at all.  I'm glad that Amazon has a Qt based reader app for the Mac.  Would I call it a "good" application?  No.

Honestly James, this may be "platformist."  Part of my resistance to cross platform applications on the Mac is the "hand-me-down" syndrome.  We have cross platform stuff, particularly from Linux, but it's like being the little brother of the family.  You never get bought your own clothes because you're always getting jackets handed down from your older brother when he grows out of them.  They're always faded, ripped up a little, and never fit quite right.  Again, it's great if you're in danger of going naked.  It sucks when you could reasonably have the new stuff.  I just don't want to forgo having new clothes because someone thinks the hand-me-downs are good enough (they cover your body, so they don't have a debilitating loss of functionality).

I don't mean this to be a personal attack of any sort, and I hope you don't take it as such.  I'm really trying to express my opinion of the state of cross-platform applications from where I sit.  I think your idea about having easier to use and edit style sheets for maps is great, and I'd hope to see it thought about carefully and implemented.

> James
> VE6SRV

--
Jeremy McDermond (NH6Z)
Xenotropic Systems
mcdermj at xenotropic.com