Notices

Interesting, but this is not Maemo Mapper's job. Must... resist... feature creep...

I don't know if I can affect that font size, but I'll look into it.

Unfortunately, no GPS receivers (or, at least of which I am aware) report orientation. I could make an assumption based on most recent heading, but that's the best I could do. I'll consider a triangle, but there already is a velocity line, so I don't think it's necessary (except maybe for hikers, but they should have compasses anyway ).

Textual information will be provided in a sidebar in a future version of Maemo Mapper, including trip info.

The menu key and home keys cannot be remapped. Or, if they can, I'd never want to, since they _are_ already mapped (home key "minimizes" to display the Nokia 770 Home, and the "key above it" is the menu key.)[/QUOTE]
With such precious few hardware keys, I doubt I could justify allocating one to control brightness.

There's a menu item to control your Auto-Center type (between None, Lat/Lon, and Lead), or you can use the "Enter" button (the center of the D-Pad) to toggle between Lat/Lon and Lead (and to snap back to your previous center type if you have since panned away from being centered).

I badly miss the voice announcements (flite). Gnuite, could you please add a warning sound at least. Other thing is that I sometimes have to use Route/Reset while driving but this is not quite safe... is it possible to call that function perhaps when the enter button is pushed? It's easier to push it twice to get the announcements back than to call the menu.

There are no bugfixes in this release, but there are a few feature request implementations. Of particular note is the addition of the localization and help frameworks (see below for more details). Mostly this release was to re-organize the package in preparation for the final release of the 2006 OS and for inclusion in the new maemo contrib repository.

Speaking of which, the gnuite.com repository, although it includes Maemo Mapper v1.0.2, is being deprecated in favor of the maemo contrib repository:

Web location: http://repository.maemo.org/contrib/
Distribution: 2.0
Components: free

The repository is open to all Garage developers, so hopefully it will begin filling up with other Garage packages.

Of course, if you prefer, Maemo Mapper's Garage page will still allow you to download the source or the deb's directly from the file download page.

About localization: the localization framework has been added, but I will leave it to the fluent to translate the English text into different languages. If you would like to have direct access to the SVN repository for translation purposes, just make a request through the Maemo Mapper Garage page (on the Summary page).

If you would like to see Maemo Mapper translated into your language, but don't have the resources to do the translation yourself, add a Tracker item concerning your requested language. That will let people know that you're interested in a translation to that language.

The same goes (sort of) for documentation. The in-program help infrastructure has been added, but if you happen to take a look at it (through the Help application; direct access via Maemo Mapper is a little buggy), you'll see that it is seriously lacking (there's basically nothing there).

If you would like to contribute documentation (maybe because you really want to help out, but you have no coding skills, or maybe my C is too ugly to read), then request to join the Maemo Mapper team as a documenter, which will give you access to the in-program help in SVN as well as the online documentation section in the Garage (which you'll note is also quite empty).

And if you want to contribute, but have no coding skills and no documentation skills, you can help by providing feedback, suggestions, and bug reports, all at Maemo Mapper's Garage website. And you can still choose to donate on the Maemo Mapper Homepage - thank you to everyone who has already donated.

I asked this in the Garage forum but as I was the first poster there, I write here too. Where can we get flite to announce waypoints in v1.0.2?

Ask moimart - he first implemented it for the 2005 OS, but there hasn't been a version for the 2006 OS yet. And for those of you keeping track at home, yes, that means that it remains untested in Maemo Mapper at the moment. The switch to the dbus-based flite was more out of anticipation than anything else - the dbus-based approach is a better one.

I wrote to him in his blog. In the meantime I guess we'll have to rely on the chime (nice feature)and read the announcements, can't wait to try it out tomorrow.

The project in Garage is managed very professionally.

To use Maemo Mapper as an in-car GPS type device is an internet connection required? If I'm going on a roadtrip without an internet connection is there a way to save off maps and have the bluetooth GPS use those to navigate?

Basically, I have a 700 and don't want to buy a TomTom as well. But I won't have internet access.

You will need to predownload the maps while you have an internet connection. Once you have the maps, Maemo Mapper will use them with the GPS. You can tell Maemo Mapper to download maps along your proposed route.

Gnuite, thanks for the great software!

I have a small feature request. I would like to estimate distances visually, but it's hard as currently there is no indication of how the map matches distances in real world. It would be nice to have some kind of indication of the current scale of the map. Indicator could be for example a small "measure stick", in the bottom of the map, just like in many real maps. Other option would be to have just a text at bottom left corner that would tell what distance is the height of map view and what distance is the width of view. The description could have been clearer, but I hope you understand what I mean.

Gnuite, sorry for not using Garage but this thread is probably read by more.

As flite is still under development, I rely on the "ding" when a waypoint announcement pops up. This is quite a good compromise but unfortunately the system alert is so soft that it is not audible in the car (especially at motorway speeds with radio on) even though the sound level for system sounds is on the highest setting of 2.

Also, I normally have the system sounds turned off. It would be good to keep the announcements independent from system sounds, a bit like the separate volume control for incoming GTalk calls.

Is there any way to assign a sharper sound to waypoint announcements?