[ gpsdrive ] .gpx conversion

[chris h]

On Wednesday 01 October 2008 22:03:06 Hamish wrote:

> it is best we outsource as much non-main-task stuff as possible to external
> packages so we can focus out meager energy on what we do well, rather than
> try to reinvent tangential wheels.
>
> if some program has written a route to a GPX track, I think we can justify
> asking the user to open the file as a GPX track, 'cause that's what it is
> now.

But from my understanding it needs to be translated to gpsdrive format which 
gpsbabel provides. I'm not sure what more recent versions of gpsdrive provide 
as I'm still stuck at pre4. This weekend I will do the upgrade.

I was wondering if it would be possible to create a pluggin module component 
like qgis uses where independent developers can develop modules that script 
interactivity with third party apps or independent code snippets ie: python  
based stuff for example. In this manner build dependencies are not infringed 
upon and no increase in burden to the current dev team other then to create 
the basic infrastructure. The rest is user/third party driven. Basically a 
script selector in most cases attached to the main menu. 

I can see a wonderfull use case for NOAA charts for example (self interest I 
know). Select NOAA charts from the drop down pluggin module selector. Select 
the region of charts that you want and the system automatically downloads the 
charts, processes them into tiles. moves them to maps_noaa folder and updates 
the map_koord.txt file. The code snippets for this already exist and wget is 
on almost all putters. This can all be run in the background on any modern 
machine with usage of gpsdrive is maintained. It will take some time however 
to download and process the tiles. Other examples of course exist as well. 

Dependencies to complete a task would be identified by the module and 
installed after gpsdrive is installed. This keeps the basic build clean and 
small and the packaging independent of  third party applications. You 
currently don't need gdal to compile nor install gpsdrive, but you would need 
to install these "if" you chose this module. This would be explained by the 
module selector. qgis does this currently rather nicely as well as maintains 
the official repository. Others of course exist as well as is the nature of 
oss development and user contribs.  

Best and thanks

/ch