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

@MartinK:
First of all, thanks for Modrana! I'm playing around with it last two weeks and I'm positively surprised by progress since end of 2010 when I tried it last time. Donation was a must for me.

During the use I found one feature/behaviour that I'm missing.
It would be great if the menu>options>map>rotation and centering setting is saved per mode.

I.e. when in Car mode, I'd set the map rotation in direction of travel to ON and centering shift to Down.
If I would then switch to Walk mode, the centering shift would be set to don't shift and also map rotation turned off.

Reasons are simple, when driving fast in car, it make sense to see what''s ahead, while walking it's better to have 'paper map-like' view with north-up orientation and centered. (EDIT: without going to options menu every time)

The setting would be saved by just switching to desired mode and doing the change. When switching to other mode, initially the default values would be loaded, after the change they are saved for current mode. I hope it's described clearly, if needed, I can explain it in Czech too :)

Or, isn't this already available and I just missed it somehow?

I know I could ask for this via Ticket Tracker but I'm interested in what others think.

Thanks! Diky!

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

Great idea, it makes sense to me...

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

I have just released V0.25-4.
The main "selling point" will probably be faster tile loading - I now use the GTK idle loop (gobject.idle_add()) instead of a Python thread for tile loading. The tiles now load much faster than before - looks like there must have been some thread priority scheduling issues with the previous separate thread based method.

The screen is now also redrawn once a new tile is available - which makes it much more fluent IMO. :)

I have also added some debugging info during tile loading for jj0. :) You can enable it in options->Debug->Tiles.

The batch download is not yet fixed, but there are still a few days left before Saturday. :)

This is planned - in a generic way for all options where it makes sense - layers, sound, voice type, etc. I'm now working on how to implement this efficiently in the underlaying persistent dictionary and also how to integrate it to the UI in a way that does not confuse users. :)

Nice to know I'm not the only one from Czech Republic on this forum. :)

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

Martin, you have done an amazing job on this application.
Before my recent holiday, I figured that I would have to fork out for Sygic to get a decent mapping software, I gave modRana a try before hand and it has acomplished all I needed and more.

I will surely donate to you in the next coming days.

One question: I think we all agree that espeak is not great (though there is no real alternative), so would it be possible to use pre-recorded sounds for certain actions?

Being able to use advanced TTS such as AT&T Natural Voices would be great.
Though there licence would prohibit distribution.

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

No worries... but did you see (reproduce) anything?

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

when following the progress of the batch download, it takes sometimes lots of seconds for one tile, very variable speed.

I'm using SQLite storage and I'm on Wifi. What should be a normal download rate ?

It takes me now more than 2 minutes for 50 tiles. Verrrrry slow.
over a sample period of 150 tiles, it took on average 2.5 s for one tile ...

For the rest, very nice program, coming along strong in features and greatdeveloper responsiveness. Keep up the good wo rk!

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

Hi MartinK. I finally upgraded ModRana. Things seem to move along smoother. One thing I noticed is that I could no longer obtain the satellite image which previously had worked quite well. Am I missing something?

Thanks again!

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

Works fine here.

Are you sure you have selected a satellite map as an overlay?
Menu>Options>Map>Map Overlay>Background map = Google Satellite

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

I have never ever understood people who are able to listen that robotic voice anywhere. IIRC conversation about pre-recorded voices have been discussed in Nokia maps thread where people hacked default navigation app. There people posted some recorded voice files.

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

Ah. Yes, I had made a mistake. Thanks for straightening me out. The only thing now is the loading time seems much longer. I waited for over 3 minutes and it still hadn't loaded. The usual yahoo map seemed to load up very quickly and was very responsive. Perhaps there is something wrong with the google data. I will check again later.