Messages

in the mean time, i tried your option 2 (maybe not exactly as you described):
i moved the mapsVector folder away (using the pc), switched the mapsVector folder to internal, and moved the folder back (using the pc) under the private locus structure on the external card.
now, startup takes about 12s (only tried twice).

so now, the vector maps were still available, but there were no more themes.
checking internal private structure shows that the mapsVector folder only contains an empty folder called _themes.
so now, i copied all themes to the internal mapsVector folder (unzipped version).
now, startup takes about 12-15s. so no big change from having no themes at all.

do i need to expect any issues, when having mapsVector configured to internal while having all the vector maps in the external folder?

yeah. they came togehter over time, as i use different types/generations of vector maps using different types of themes.
and over time, i think i lost a bit the overview. so there might be some themes i do not really need anymore.

and there is bad news about startup time:
i haven't changed anything in the mean time, but after not running locus for about 1 hour, startup again took 22s,
and after stopping it and starting for a 2nd time, it took 18s.

so no real advantage from using the zipped themes.

thanx for the hint!
just heard once about zip themes - but had no idea what this is for.
so i compressed all my themes located in subfolders under the _themes folder, one by one, and deleted the former subfolders containing the 39 uncompressed themes.
so now, the "white screen with locus logo" phase on startup is reduced from 20 to 12 seconds.
so it's still much slower than before the last updates, but at least better than before compressing.
thanx for your support!

btw: what kind of problem does android have with with uncompressed themes?
i just try to understand what's going wrong, as this issue might be related to the issue of the geocaching folder, which i have since 3.56.1

i did a few more tests with having only few files under data/geocaching.

with 1000 html files, located directly under data/geocaching on the external sd card:
- opening the waypoint belonging to a html file, which is the first file in the geocaching folder (in alphabetical order) took a few seconds to open, switching between tabs works fine.
- opening any other waypoint shows a black or white screen and takes forever. had to terminate locus after a few minutes as it seemed to be dead.

with only 80 html files, located directly under data/geocaching on the external sd card:
- opening the waypoint belonging to a html file which is the first one in the geocaching folder (in alphabetical order) took about no time to open, switching between tabs works fine.
- opening another waypoint which belongs to a html file took about no time to open, switching between tabs works fine
- opening a waypoint which HAS NO HTML FILE IN THE GEOCACHING FOLDER took about 40seconds TO OPEN, SWITCHING BETWEEN TABS takes about 5seconds

so this latest of the tests above looks to me a bit like: locus has a problem if there are files in the geocaching folder but there is no file found for the actual waypoint yet.

i hope this is helpful for further investigations...

with 3.56.5, it is still not possible for me to use the huge amount of html and images under data/geocaching on the external sd card.
therefore, i think about a workaround, but i'm not sure if all my assumptions are right or if my idea is prohibited by any android rules.

when i have all the html and images, i used to have under data/geocaching to a different folder, e.g. data/gcfiles, locus does not seem to be harmed by those files anymore, but for sure, i do not see a spoiler tab anymore when opening a waypoint.
- i assume that locus is still allowed to access all files under data/gcfiles as they are still in the private locus structure. right?

my idea is to add a link to the user notes section within gsak. so this link is then shown under the basic info tab when opening the waypoint in locus.
so i expect that, when selecting this link on the basic info tab, the html it points to should open. right?

so i need to know how i need to define the path to access a file, let's call it "gc11111.htm"
located in the folder "\Android\data\menion.android.locus.pro\files\Locus\data\gcfiles\html" of the external sd card.
how does such a link look like from within locus?

can this file then be shown within locus or does this open an external browser (which maybe has no access to the file in the locus private structure)?

thanx for the implementation of having a separate setting for the geocaching folder.
so now i am able to have a setup similar to what i had before updating to 3.56.1:
- main folder internal
- maps, mapsVector, geocaching external
so i can go on with testing...

unfortunately, updating to 3.56.5 does not seem to help concerning the crash reported for 3.56.1. behaviour is still:
- opening a waypoint takes 90-120s (if it works). often locus crashes while opening a waypoint and has to be restarted.
- once a waypoint is open, switching between the tabs of a waypoint takes about 10s
i really wonder what's going in the background making the device that slow...as at least, once a waypoint is open, i cannot see what locus could do taking that much time to switch between tabs.

my actual file structure under the geocaching folder is:
- 100 files (most of them html) directy within geocaching
-  a html subfolder with 13000 html files in
-  a image subfolder containing about 1000 subfolders holding a total of about 19000 jpg images

as already tested with 3.56.1, removing all the images as well as the appropriate folders does not help.

before updating to 3.56.1, i had the same folder structure. at this time opening a waypoint took a few seconds and switching between tabs took about no time.

as soon as i delete the content of the geocaching folder, everything works fine again...but this is not really what i like to do ;-(

this morning, i updated to 3.56.5.
after this, i decided to move the locus directory to the internal flash...and i got some more info on the slow startup. so that's what i did in detail:

- with the sd card in the pc, i first moved the maps and mapsVector folder away from the locus pro private folder on the flash card.
- i put the sd card back in the phone and switched locus main folder to internal. took quite a while.
from this moment, startup of locus was much faster. the locus icon on the white screen only showed for about 2s instead of the 20s it had shown up before.

- then i put the sd card in the pc to move maps and mapsVector back to the locus private folders on the flash card. surprisingly, these two folders were still available as emtpy folders within the locus structure, while all other folders were gone. so then, they were no longer empty.

surprisingly, after putting the sd card back to the the phone, i noticed:
-  i could show a vector map, located on the flash card, although all folders in locus were still configured to internal
- (i didn't try to load a raster map from maps folder at this time)
- startup was still fast

to make configuration clean, i first reconfigured the maps folder to external private locus folder. after that, everything was fine so far.

after a restart, i also reconfigured the mapsVector folder to external. surprisingly, this took quite a while and it looked like some themes were copied (although i did not expect to have some themes internally as i had moved the whole mapsVector folder away from locus before switching main folder to internal).

anyway, this did not seem to change a lot as i was able to use vector maps already before reconfiguring to external (don't know why).
but what i see now is, that the white screen with the locus icon shows up for about 22s on startup.

or to make it short:
while i had mapsVector configured to internal (but maps were on external flash), i was able to load vector maps from the external flash and startup time was fine.
s soon as i configured mapsVector to external flash, startup got very slow again.

great to hear - thanx!
hope this will also solve the issue, where locus crashes whenever i have data in the geocaching folder, since i had to move whole locus to the ext sd card (with update 3.56.1)

are there any plans to allow having the data/geocaching folder on the external flash card while running locus in the internal memory (separate folder configuration for data/geocaching)?

or is there already a workaround to do so?

a few days ago, locus map pro updated to 3.56.4
since then, when starting locus, i get a white screen with the locus symbol for about 20s, while nothing seems to happen.
after that, i get the ususal screen with the percentage counting up, which takes one more 15s.
so the total start time now increased to 35s.

before updating to 3.56.4, i didn't have this 20s period showing nothing but the locus symbol, i.e. it directly started with the page showing the percentage.

what is locus doing while letting me wait for another 20s (introduced with the last update)?
can this be avoided?

btw:
since updated to 3.56.1, i need to run locus from the external flash card (with some issues reported in another post), but waiting for the additional 20s on startup was not recognized before 3.56.4.

and just a question to get a folder setup similar to what i had before:
is there a way to have the data/geocaching folder on the external sd while having locus installed internally?
haven't seen this option in the settings, but maybe this would help (as this is the setup i had before the update)

hi menion
with my original installation, i had locus in the internal memory, and maps, vectormaps and data/geocaching on the external sd card.
within data/geocaching, i had about 13000 html files and 17000 images.
opening a geocache always took a few (2 to 10s) seconds. switching between tabs within a waypoint view was possible without noticable delay.
now, having it all on the external sd card still works fine, as long as the data/geocaching folder is empty.
having all the html and images in the folder, shows a black screen for up to 2 minutes before opening a waypoint (need to press on "wait" several times).
then, once the waypoint has opened, it takes about 10s to switch between the tabs.
and in addition to that, when waiting for the screen to turn off, it often happens that locus is no longer running when reactivating the screen (seems to have crashed) and needs to be restarted.
android also reports that the app uses a lot of energy in the background (which was never indicated before).
just for a test, i moved away the images from the data/geocaching folder to only have the 13000 html in.
unfortunately, this did not seem to help in any way ;-(
my id is 6e6562c63

so does this mean that i still can have the folders
    maps
    vectormaps
    data/geocaching
on the external sd card, while having the rest of locus in the internal flash memory?
this is not clear for me so far.
from the migration process, i assume that i either need to have all data in the private locus folder under android in the internal memory (which is not big enough in my case), or in the private locus folder under android on the external sd card.
please clarify!
thanx a lot for your help!

today, my device (a galaxy a50) updated to locus 3.56.1.
so i was forced to select new folders.
so far, i had locus in the internal memory, while maps, vector maps and geocaches were on the external sd card.
selecting internal flash as new main folder was not possible due to a lack of space, so i selected the external flash.
a few hours later, vector maps were copied and  most things were probably located in the private folder on the sd card.
as raster maps were not moved, i had to do this manually. also the geocaching folder was only partially moved, so i also moved this data to the new location.
now, locus seems to work again as long as i do not try to open a waypoint.
as soon as i do so, no matter if it came to the map from either geocaching4locus or from the gsak-addon, i get a black screen for some time and then, locus terminates.
when i rename the geocaching folder so that locus does not recognize it anymore, opening a waypoint works, but for sure i'm no longer able to see all my added data for the waypoint then.
so long, i had a few 1000 files in the geocaching folder and this worked fine, but since today's update to 3.56.1, i can no longer use files from the geocaching folder.

and here the screenshot when using a vector map and zooming out