Good point ! I wonder if some weather/weather radar layer or similar exist...

Currently it doesn't This will be added in two forms - interactive update and batch update.

Interactive update means that modRana checks when loading a tile if there is newer one on the tileserver (all tileservers I have checked so far use the "last changed" HTTP header) and replaces the old one if there is.
This should be quite easy to add and would work both when viewing the map and batch-downloading tiles.

Batch update means that modRana checks all stored tiles for updates - this is a bit more tricky becuse it has to correctly generate the URL for all stored tiles, but doable. This should work with both files and sqlite storage (I have already considered the update functionality while designing the sqlite table layout, so there is a saved-timestamp column ).

Also, some per layer variables might be needed - the possible traffic layer probably shouldn't be saved to disk at all or have a limited validity - so that users are not confused outdated info.

Well if it could be packaged for Debian I don't see why it can't be also packaged for Maemo. But I don't really feel like packaging it myself - I have no idea how to properly do a binary package. Also, did anybody try the mbrola voices ? If so, how do they compare to the default ones in espeak ? BTW, if the mbrola voices do improve espeak output quality, packaging them might be of interest for all the other projects using it (Espeak caller, Espeak clock, Espeak GUI, etc.).

There are basically two things modRana should gain by using clutter - performance and smooth/seamless transitions. Layer blending, rotation and scaling, which are quite "expensive" with software rendering should be almost "free" with GPU acceleration. It will be also possible to properly animate certain operations that currently just switch from one state to another and might be confusing (zooming, rotation).

It should be also possible to do a fake3D view and kinetic scrolling, like in CloudGPS.

The actual performance remains to be seen, but initial testing looks promising.

BTW, I'm going to submit the Clutter interface & offline routing as existing application improvements to the Coding competition.

I have already looked into this - the method using Google maps is very easy to add - just a new POI search preset.
The POI database that can downloaded from the afdc website should also be eventually usable, once the planed support for off-line POI catalogs is added.


Another progress update...
I've got the text wrapping in the navigation info box working. Now I just have to solve some remaining minor issues and do some testing. Next release should be hopefully ) coming shortly.