Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

You can use the Download submenu to batch-download tiles.

There is a slight disadvantage that some tileservers might ban you if you donwnload too many tiles. :) Other than that, it is all just png/jpg/gif(really, even gif!) images. So it all depends on what layers you need. :)

Sure why not - but I think people it might be good to make this optional with a switch in Options, as most people probably expect the current behavior shared by most other Fremantle applications (switching between fullsceen and system-bar-is visible states). :)

BTW, I remember modRana QML being more crash prone when running with the system bar shown, so this might indeed by a nice way to have status info, minimize and quit & less chance of crashing. Might have been fixed by a CSSU update in the meantime though.

OK OK working on it! :D

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

One thing I've always found confusing about the Download submenu/dialog is that it prompts you for + 0 down or + 1 down etc. I don't undestand what that means in physical units. It would be more helpful to me if it asked for something like 10 meter res or 100 meter res etc. Just listing up and down choices gives me no clue about the results I'll get, because I don't know what the app is going down from, and I don't know if +3 down is three times as fine a scale as +1 down, or 10**3 times as fine. Perhaps this is documented and I should just RTFM, but I haven't seen it.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

I've always assumed that download menus down and up is from current zoomlevel and refers to zoomlevels (when zoomin it shows briefly the zl-number you go to), but haven't actually seen it documented anywhere or tested to see if it is correct.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

Correct, +down/up is relative to current zoom level on map, and reffers to zoom levels used by current layer(s).

OTOH, it wouldn't be possible to use "10 meter res" or "100 meter res", as some layers vary significally in that matter - it's up to layer's creator discretion to decide, which res will he use on which zoom level.

It may be obvious to most, but still worth noting here - zoom level isn't what common language reffers to with "zoom" normally. Zoom level in map layers means, actually, different tilesets, which aren't "zoomed" at all - they're drawn in ModRana at their original resolution. They're pre-rendered by layer creators to show more/less area.

"Real" zoom could be introduced with vector maps, but, of course, it excludes out satellite-photo layers.
---

Frankly, I always found ModRana's batch download quite flexible and user-friendly - I just set "zoom" on map to desired level, go to batch download, and set area + if I want to have close-up or further away views of that area, too.

It is worth to note, that most of the times, MB size of "further-away" views is negilible (*much* less tiles), compared to more close-up views, so is is usually wise to download "max up". OTOH, when adding "down" (closer view) layers, size increases expotentialy (much more tiles needed to cover same area for close-view zoom levels).

Still, if people are asking it, it is worth documenting (I hope this post contributes to that ;) ).

/Estel

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

This is an issue with all OSM based navigation tools. I remember the first time I tried Marble. It just confused the hell out of me since using it assumed I knew all about how OSM maps are laid out. I was expecting using it like you use any other decent navigation tool: download a map for a specific country as a single file. But no, you needed to faff around with tiles, zoom levels and all that stuff.

Modrana made it a bit easier, plus it was (is) being actively developed so one could (can) get help from the thread. It was Modrana that helped me to understand how tile based maps work and what you need to do, with backwards enlightenment implications on Google Maps and other, similarly tile-based services.

Still, I would prefer if there was a "download a map pack for a current country" option in Modrana rather than "download tiles at +X -Y zoom levels in Z km around me". But that could be achieved only if the maps were vector based. It took me nearly two weeks(!) to download all zoom levels in a strip of just 2° LON and 1° LAT around where I live, on a PC with a fast internet connection. The total takes over 8GB of disk space. And that is less than 10% of the entire country.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

Well it'd download all the tiles of a layer in a specified radius. But It's a pita to download tiles for a whole country. The .pbf or counterparts are vector maps. Is it possible to render them to png (or sth else) and then mapconvert to sqlite (or event to convert .pbf to sqlite directly)?

Btw. batch download is a little tricky about terminology. Is around here the center of view or my gps location? Is around view around the center of view or simply x km outside of the view?

As for me, there's no use in enabling the status bar, as it causes the interface to be cut off (or is it just an illusion?)

It might be written in the help that left corner minimizes, etc.

OK, so we might have the reason for this:
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12634

The problem is: inean seems to be completely offline/ignore maemo stuff. So the thing complicates. We might try to use the latest gitorious components - 1.3 (or even the nemo ones (1.4.8)). For the 1.3 meegotouchtheme-nokia-graphics is needed. The reply I've gotten for the uploading is:

Does that mean a permission?

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

I still can't download tiles a large amount of tiles around my area.
After about 20 minutes of downloading the device switches off.
I seem to have to download small amounts and increase the area bit by bit. I'd still ideally just like to download my country in one hit.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

I use JTileDownloader running on my PC for big batch downloads.

I've also had the "device unresponsive and getting hot while Modrana downloading" issue. Hint: Martin, would it be possible to throw 'nice' in there somewhere? It looks like we are being hit by the watchdog kicking in.

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

Never, ever, got any performance problems while batch downloading large areas in ModRana. Could be related to swap related settings + swap on microSD, as it sounds similar to problems some people have while downloading/extracting big archive packages (like easy debian).

/Estel

Re: [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
 

I've had the same problem with very large batch downloads (the ones supposed to take hours) on both of my N900. After half hour or so the device rebooted. Neither of them had any special swap setting that I can think of only swappolube installed with recommended settings.