[Xastir] gpsman shapefile questions

[Kevin Ratcliff]

On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 5:03 AM, Kevin Ratcliff <kevin at kevinratcliff.com> wrote:
> I've been playing with gpsman (version 6.4) and am getting the message
> "Unknown file format name: Shapefile_2D" when trying to download a GPS
> track with Xastir, and Google led me to the above thread. I haven't
> tested the patch yet, but I'm assuming that's my problem. I'll test it
> later when I have more time.

Tested the patch with my Garmin 60CSx. Worked great and I can download
tracks, though now I have another question:

The GPS track was downloaded to ~/.xastir/gps/. That's fine, but it
needs to be in the maps directory to show up in the map chooser,
right? I solved this problem by creating a symbolic link in
/usr/local/share/xastir/maps/ to ~/.xastir/gps/, and then each time I
download a new GPS track I use Map->Configure->Add New Maps. That
seemed to work, but is that the right way to do it?

I wonder if I'm missing something that's supposed to make this easier
or more automated. There's a 'GPS' directory in my maps directory, but
it just contains a placeholder. I'm not sure what that directory is
good for. Aha...found some info in README.MAPS about this; looks like
maybe that's where gpsman used to put stuff.

> In theory the following
> command should work for newer model Garmin USB GPS units, right?
>
> gpsman -dev usb=/dev/ttyUSB0 -log -rec Garmin getwrite TR Shapefile
> dim=2 astrotest

This works with my Garmin 60CSx as well. Cool! Hope it works with the
Astro receiver as well.

Can't seem to get anything on Ubuntu to talk to my Garmin 62s, and
Google is no help this time, but the 62s was just released a few
months ago so perhaps the software hasn't caught up yet; not too
worried about that at the moment.

Thanks!

Kevin
KB9MQU