Notices

Thanks for the positive feedback everyone, appreciated :-)

@gsever; Yes, that's possible. Note that you need both one or more offline routing maps (downloadable by country in the configuration dialog of monav in the routing dialog) and the map tiles. They can be downloaded using the "Download Region" dialog. It allows to download either a rectangular region (visible map region) or tiles along the route.

Maps are downloaded to /home/user/MyDocs/.local/share/marble/maps/
We have plans to share the OpenStreetMap tiles downloaded with other applications by reusing the /home/user/MyDocs/.maps/ directory. This may already be doable manually if you use ext4 for the flash memory and create an appropriate symlink in /home/user/MyDocs/.local/share/marble/maps/earth/openstreetmap => /home/user/MyDocs/.maps/OpenStreetMap I.

@zimon: When does that crash happen exactly? Could be a Qt bug indeed given the rather long backtrace in Qt libs.

@Maruzko: Audible announcements aren't done yet, only textual ones. I hope to have it soon though, either via tts or via prerecorded audio files. It can't make it into 1.0 though as that one is feature frozen.

@zvogt: Can you give some details when crashes occur? Which map theme and which projection are you using? What have you done at that time, e.g. zooming, panning, calculating routes or similar.

The driving instructions view in the routing dialog indeed has the scrolling problem you describe. Qt doesn't handle the two scrollable widgets nice here. The only workaround is to use the keyboard for navigating through the driving instruction at this time. I hope the competing scrolling will be fixed in Qt.
I'm not aware of any other menu with such a problem though. Please report if there are others.

I'm working on supporting imperial units now. It won't get a GUI though, but rely on the locales used. One thing I'm not sure about is which distance values should be presented in feet and which in miles. Looking at other applications, there doesn't seem to be a consistent way: Sometimes only miles are used, sometimes values shorter than one mile are presented in feet. Is there some "correct" way to do it?

Almost right after the program is started.
I see the window "Marble" and a picture of compass quickly before the crash.

regarding crash on start, a
rm /home/user/MyDocs/.local/share/marble/routing/route.kml
helped to work around a known bug. http://websvn.kde.org/?view=revision&revision=1208604

/j

Thanks for the response earthwings.

I was wondering if full continent data be loaded through say http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm for offline use. Where does monav fetch the data from? I might do manual or wget based download to get the whole US routing data instead of selecting state by state --which 50 is a big number for a manual operation

I have that routing directory empty. Never got that far it would create there something. I do get Marble working with GPRS APN, but I'd like to download maps when connected through Dummy APN with USB-cable or Bluetooth, as I do for example with modRana and Mappero.

Initially any .osm file can be used, but it must not be too big. Monav has a file size limit of 4 GB for its output files IIRC. Therefore you cannot loat the whole planet. Restricting it to the US may work though to create a large monav map. There are two tools needed for it, one is the Monav preprocessor from the 0.2 release of Monav. Use it to generate a gps grid and contraction hierarchies files. The second tool is written by me and generates metadata used by Marble in .kml format. It includes the outline polygon of the map and upgrade information. You can omit that one without major problems (most severe limitation will be that you can only use one map for monav then because the data boundaries are unknown).

I haven't released that tool yet, but I'll do that early next year together with a tutorial describing how to create such maps. Can't do it right now because it's stored locally on a system I don't have access to currently.

If I get a hold on .osm data for the US together with a .poly outline for it, I can do the preprocessing as well and include the full US map in conjunction with the other downloadable country maps. Unfortunately cloudmade doesn't offer that data. I'm not sure if my server has enough free space left as well.

You can get a list of all available monav (offline routing) maps easily btw: The "installation" in Marble simply extracts them in /home/user/MyDocs/.local/share/marble/maps/earth/monav/, you can do that manually or with a script as well.

@zimon: I'm afraid the only way is to wait for a bugfix in Qt. At least that's what I'd expect it to be from the backtrace.

i manage to get dirrections working offline mode, but i cant see anything like it tells me where to turn or where to go but i just see the map like in satelite view... idk maybe because im from peru ( south america ) i follow the steps but no imagines.

After trying the app, I only have one criticism: Performance!
It is slower than Fennec, and while the UI looks beautiful, it is daunting to use because its response time is a bit slow.

Apart from this, I'm happy for this feature-rich app!

thanks for making marble available for us!

I'd like to add to what Venemo said - performance is less than ideal.
but what is missing the most for me is the option to download map tiles for an entire country - for example i'd like to download map tiles for all of Israel to make that offline routing more useful.
that's what will make marble really useful for me.

If earthwings can progress this through the bugging stages from the pure feedback i think this app may well indeed once working with voice and capable of complete country mapping could leave OVI standing.

Keep the maps free to download and a full set of instructions and this looks like gold !.

One request though is to make sure this app does not make hidden charges in any way and can be clear on when offline and online.

VERY VERY good work please please carry this through !.