[ gpsdrive ] .gpx conversion

[Guenther Meyer]

Am Donnerstag 02 Oktober 2008 schrieb 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.
>
right.

> 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.
>
as of 2.10pre5 gpsdrive can open a gpx track directly, but currently only the 
first track in the file is used.
the problem with the gpx track loading is, that some people seem to get a 
segfault while doing this. as I can't reproduce this, I can'thelp there.

> 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 chose gpx as import/export format, because that is an open well known and 
widely used standard which meets all requirements. that is is my opinion 
better than having a proprietary format and hoping that others will support 
it.
most conversions can be done with gpsbabel, I guess, so there's no need for us 
to provide additional filters.

> 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.
>
I'm currently working on the map download code.
if the charts can be fetched from a http or ftp server, and can be provided in 
our 1280x1024 format, they could be included very easily.
if some more processing is necessary, this should be done in an external 
module.

> 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.
>
making gpsdrive completely modular is a good idea.
tinkering around to do this for particular functions is not so good.
such a modular design has to be done from the base.
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