[ gpsdrive ] USER SURVEY: what's your primary usage of gpsdrive?

[chris h]

On Saturday 20 September 2008 04:30:16 Guenther Meyer wrote:
> hi,
>
> please could all gpsdrive users give some feedback to the following points,
> to help in development:
>
>
> * hardware type and model (pc, pda, phone, ...)
P4 1.7 workstation
P3 IBM Laptop
UMPC really soon now...first one with a 9" touch screen get my money


> * display size (in pixels and inches)
workstation 1280x1024  17"LCD panel
laptop (will have to check but its a high end screen 1480 or higher) 14"
UMPC typically 800x400 9"

> * input method (mouse, keys, touchscreen, ...)
keyboard
eventually touchscreen in UMPC formfactor

> * place of action (car, boat, bike, ...)
on the water....primarily for marine navigation once I get it all sorted out

> * map usage (mapnik, downloaded maps, scanned maps, ...)
NOAA Raster charts, ENC vector charts once gdal fully supports it.
Self scanned charts.
Proprietary charts if I could figure out how to decode them. C-MAP is the 
preferred choice for my region. 

> * what are you doing with gpsdrive?
learning it, testing it, and trying to push it towards a marine navigation 
system.

> * wishes?

route planning capabilities. (marine usage)

better map selection and download functionality: see the way zyGrib does it, 
you start off with a world map, select a region with the mouse that is auto 
highlighted, then download file accordingly....in this case grib files, Zoom 
out and zoom in is much smoother as well. This is very usefull in a planning 
mode. Not that usefull under realtime mode.

I don't see a need for the magnification buttons as all they do is increase 
the size of the existing image (map). Personally I never use it, however 
others may.

Ability to pan map in map preview window on bottom left. Would really nice to 
be able to move the red square with a mouse to relocate the map in the main 
window. Right now the map is auto best fit only based on your gps position 
and the preview window functions only to show relative position on existing 
map. 

Better zoom level handling on existing map without changing scale of map. Cant 
seem to get this to work. 

Ability to pan map in main window, left right up down. 

Ability to select what functionality I want during compile time. Say if you 
don't want open streetmap mapnik friends or voice integration this should be 
available to keep the binary as small as possible and free of non required 
libraries.

Night mode. Selection level of color and brightness. Don't know the correct 
term but it would be nice to be able to dim of main map as well. Say a choice 
of three levels in night mode to keep it simple

Keep the mapkood.txt file a txt file please otherwise it will make it too 
difficult to manage if it becomes an sql file. While technically more 
sophisticated it would require users to learn sql to manage their maps. The 
point of entry for users then becomes to high and usage would decrease. The 
more users, the more developers and contributors the better the product. If 
this process however were fully automated it would not be a stumbling block 
and user entry point would not be affected. 

Better documentation...user contrib generated?? 
ie: a manual would be nice. The man pages are very good (perhaps outdated in 
sections but not user friendly. Point of entry is too high for the average 
end user.  They are written as man pages not a user manual. Drop the entry 
point and the user base will increase.

Cleaner website,...user contrib generated??

Tighter integration with other distributions. (user contrib or generated) 
Currently its developed on debian testing/unstable which means there is a 
significant lag between integration with other distributions due to 
dependencies. Ideally this would be managed by maintainers per distro.

Grib file integration for marine usage

Don't know if this is possible and I don't think so at present (perhaps Hamish 
or others know) but integration marine autopilot would be very sweet. Since I 
don't have an autopilot cant test it. 
 

> thanks for your feedback!

Thank you for all your hard work. Its a great effort. 

-- 
/ch