maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - [Announce] modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system

MartinK	2011-02-04 , 20:58
Posts: 1,548 \| Thanked: 7,510 times \| Joined on Apr 2010 @ Czech Republic	#501

Originally Posted by petur

Which brought up an idea: How about latitude integration in the routing? The guys I'm meeting with are all using latitude so being able to route to them seems like a fun feature (I know this will not help me this weekend, but maybe next year)

So its a Google provided location sharing service ? Looks like they even have native pure-Python bindings for it

But still, I think I can't manage to integrate it to be ready tomorrow

Originally Posted by skykooler

martinK: I have been using modrana a lot over the past few weeks, and I have a few suggestions for what would make it perfect in my opinion at least.
Determine point reached distance based on speed (so the radius at 60 mph is three times that at 20 mph).

Add customizeable callout distances. E.g. I might want a callout at 50 yards, one at 500 and one at 2000 but other people might want them in different places.

This is planed, together with setting time-to-turn style triggers (eq. dependent on recent average speed) - which would probably do the same as automatically enlarging the distance based on current speed.

Originally Posted by skykooler

Have eSpeak say the number of yards that triggers it, not the actual number of yards. For instance, if a callout is at 300 yards and eSpeak is triggered at 297.4 yards, have eSpeak say 300 anyway.

Aesthetic thing: Split numbers at the two digit mark, so for example 422 is read "four twenty-two" instead of "four hunderd and twenty-two".

Originally Posted by Mentalist Traceur

While I don't personally use modRana (currently on Navit), I just want to say, while I agree with Skykooler's ideas - make them optional, and selectable in settings. Some people might like the precision of it announcing the exact distance at announcement, instead of the triggering callout amount. Same for the aesthetic thing - different people will have different preferences for what the way they want to hear numbers said. (Last I checked, not all of the English speaking world likes saying numbers in the above mentioned technically-gramatically-wrong manner.)

Modrana is a flexible GPS navigation system, so a few more items in options wont hurt

But I will certainly add some rounding for longer distances, say over 100 meters - it is really not needed know if the nex turn is comming in 422 or 427 meters and takes too long to pronounce (so its more likely to actually miss the turn).

Originally Posted by skykooler

I don't know whether this is possible: Load the traffic layer from Google Maps?\

If its just a normal transparent PNG layer (like the street overlay one), this should be quite easy to add (basically just adding the correct URL) and could be used with the map overlay feature.

Originally Posted by skykooler

MartinK: In terms of hardware acceleration, have you looked at glitz?

This is probably too low-level and there seems to be no easy way to interface with glitz from a GTK/Python based program as modRana. Also, modRana might be already using some form of acceleration (X render ?) as it is using the Xlib surface, which should actually use available (i guess 2D) acceleration, according to the documentation. I haven't yet found a way how to check which backend it is actually using, but since map rotation, overlay and scaling are already quite usable, I would say some form of acceleration is used.

I have made short survey into available acceleration methods a while ago.
First I have looked on plain OpenGL (this is what CloudGPS uses), there is even a short (working) Python example in the Maemo wiki. But it uses xlib directly and I haven't found any way how to integrate it with the rest of modRana, that uses GTK+Cairo. Also, OpenGL ES (1.1 & 2.0) available on Maemo (and also on most other devices with mobile GPUs) is generally not compatible with the OpenGL available on "normal" PC - and I would like modRana to stay as multi-platform as possible (BTW, it runs just fine on Linux PC, even through X forwarding

.
Next I looked at Clutter - this is what Maemo 5 uses for all those fancy animations

There are Python bindings for clutter 0.8 - which are outdated and have a nasty bug preventing GTK integration

Fortunately, I have succeeded in compiling bindings for clutter-1.0, that are not that ancient and don't have that GTK related bug.
Simple performance tests look promising - I can make multiple tile images move smoothly across the screen (although there is some tearing from time to time), with simultaneous rotation and scaling...hmm looks like I can do this even with full page manga scans

Of course, it remains to be seen how it performs in a real life scenario.
Also, Clutter supports both OpenGL ES and "normal" OpenGL all the work done towards acceleration would be usable across multiple platforms.
tl,dr: modRana will use Clutter to make dragging the map smoother

Originally Posted by skykooler

I would be glad to help if you would like.

Thanks, any for of help would be really appreciated !

Originally Posted by slender

@MartinK
Beautification is probably last step but to make it easier do you have SVG file of your buttons. I found Ranas .svg file but it differs little from Modranas.

http://svn.openstreetmap.org/applica...le/rana/icons/

It would be easier to edit buttons if there is vector file. Making svg where icons are grouped by by screens makes theme editing also bit easier.

Take a look at /opt/modrana/data/gui_source/icons.svg in the latest modRana version

All icons are derived from this file, since the latest version there is even a script generate_icons.sh that automatically generates a few icons from the file to PNGs automatically.
ModRana now actually supports SVG icons (also JPEG and some more exotic ones too) but I have found that the re-rendering takes too long vs using appropriately sized pre-rendered PNGs. It took over a second just to render the icons for the main menu - they are cached after that, but a first time render is needed up to four time (fullscreen, non-fullscreen, rotated fullscreen, rotated non-fullscreen) and the PNGs look just as good

Originally Posted by 白い熊

Other than that, the loading of the tiles seems to be SUPER SLOW, i.e. I'm not sure if it has to do with the database being big or what, when I've downloaded lots of tiles, but just zooming in and out, I get the "Loading" on all tiles for like 10 seconds at a time, what's up with that?

I'll look into it, might be the background tile loading thread being starved for CPU time or indeed some db issues.

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modRana: a flexible GPS navigation system
Mieru: a flexible manga and comic book reader
Universal Components - a solution for native looking yet component set independent QML appliactions (QtQuick Controls 2 & Silica supported as backends)

Last edited by MartinK; 2011-02-04 at 21:04. Reason: add forgotten quote

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