Messages

No. Locus does not use .imp files.

So seriously... is it that important to enable/disable gps fix sounds with a single click, but for example leave guiding sounds unchanged? Does this warrant a preferences mess where i have in fact three different ways to enable/disable an alert? I think not.

Maybe one single global option to mute/unmute Locus would do. That would affect all your sounds and alerts at once, independently from the rest of the phone, and still not clutter all your preferences pages with extra windows and triple-checkmarking.

If I want finer granularity, I can enable/disable every single alert with its ringtone dialog.

But to add an extra layer of enabling/disabling here is a bit over the top really.

The same is true for the Guiding Sounds window. I cant see any reason for that at all, it could just sit happily inside the normal android settings list on the Guiding prefs page.

Hm... you are right. Locus has perfectly standardized settings almost all the way already. I somehow forgot that when seeing those subwindow screenshots, sorry.

Anyway... why is that too complex for android? Because of Beep and Choose Sound? Could it not just go to the normal GPS settings page? Its quite messy right now with its "Enable notification" thing anyway. What good is that for? If I want to globally mute my phone, I just mute my phone. If I want to mute a specific gps alert, I can set it to "Mute" in the ring tone dialog.

Why would I need TWO EXTRA ways to enable/disable that specifically in Locus? Right now you have this "enable notification" checkmark thing in the main GPS settings page and then another set of checkmarks in the popup window. And then you can enable an alert but set it to MUTE in the ring tone dialog, which effectively disables it. Thats a complete triple mess :-).

The ring tone dialog comes from Android I presume? Can you add your simple "Beep" there somehow? Or maybe just the contents of locus/alerts as well as the system ringtones? Then you would not need any extra freaky gadgets but could simply offer

* GPS fix acquired alert
  "Beep"
* GPS fix lost alert
  "Andromeda"
* GPS fix lost repeat timer
  10 seconds <- defaults to 0 = no repeat.

in your main gps settings page. Thats it. No subwindow at all, no triple-checkmark crazyness.

Questionmarks... well... to be honest, i would much rather see a standard android settings interface for everything. You might consider it boring now, but in fact it's simple, easy to grasp, beautiful, battery-saving. It doesnt need complicated things like extra help texts hidden behind question marks because there is plenty explaining text already, way more than with your one-word-labels. Almost all other apps do it that way, it will look pretty in ics and below, etcpp. It's just standard and people expect it.

Custom ms-windows desktop emulation things on the other hand (subwindows, close gadgets, ok/cancel buttons) are not androidish and confusing. And the more work you put into your own ui (like the question mark thingies?!), the harder it will be to "get back on the proper path" later. Of course you are in love with your own button inventions right now... but maybe that will change with time.

I think Locus can have a really fancy main screen (the map view) with loads of custom things all around, but should stick to android standards everywhere else.

Android standard. Simple, Easy to use, Beautiful.
[attachment=0:33kxc3xz]SC20120115-192729.jpg[/attachment:33kxc3xz]
Just my opinion obviously, yours may differ .

Just something general for all settings: negative options (ie "Disable/Hide/Etc whatever") are mostly a bad idea. It requires users to ENable a checkmark to DISable a feature, which is counter intuitive. I would always use a positive option unless there's a really good reason not to. That means...

* Show extra labels

instead of

* Hide extra labels

The positive options can of course default to on or off, depending on what makes more sense.

I'd call them "guidelines", not just "tips". And Locus is majorly different. The main menu itself is already something really strange to Android, as are basically all your "sub windows".

Doesnt bother me much just now, I havent even seen ICS yet. But Google is clearly trying to increase consistency in app usage in the future. This is not a bad thing in general. When more and more apps follow their new guidelines, Locus might look and feel quite alien.

Anyway... learning OpenGL is maybe more important

http://developer.android.com/design/index.html

this could be interesting regarding the original topic of user interface design. ics wants plenty things differently than locus i fear

I totally agree with free and open formats. Unfortunately, thats not how the mapping world works today. In the end, the user buys a dvd from kompass or ign with a pretty map and then wants to use his map in Locus. How to make this as easy and painless as possible?

Right now this involves hunting down OziMapTrans in the dark web on some shady download sites, convert tne proprietary dvd to geotiff, then download free ttqv demo version, import the geotif, export to rmap.

Not impossible, but still a major hassle. How to make it simpler? I dont know. But another custom format unfortunately wont help a lot.

Ps, sorry for posting so much. Sitting on a beach on gran canaria waiting for the night... a bit boring

another idea: in one years time, osm will beat all commercialy available maps both in accuracy and rendering quality everywhere on this planet. so all thats really needed is advancements in mapsforge, custom raster data is a dying thing of the past

just kidding...

Btw... i still cannot believe that todays devices would have any issues whatsoever with decoding geotif. Whats all the scaryness about? Its just a few tiles with a few coordinates and some raster data and overviews or not. Why would that be any problem at all, cpu or battery wise? What hyper complex tiff implementation details am i missing?

Of course it needs a bit more code than something as simple as rmap. But once the code is there, wouldnt it run just as efficient?

How much longer do you think desktops will live? The sooner you cut off all dependencies, the better you'll be prepared...

But anyway, all this geotiff/python/tileserver/conversion things is mainly for power users. I think the "normal guy" would benefit most if you could strike deals with mapping companies and offer in-app download purchases or whatever. Sad but true...

Talking formats, The advantage of rmap was mainly that it is supported for export by ttqv and compeland, who in turn have deals with many commercial map providers. So in theory, users dont need to dive down to command line level to create locus mapa.

Not a complete copy obviously. The tile server just reads whatever part is wanted from whatever format it supports and sends it over to locus. It also caches it into something quicker if it thinks reading the original data was too slow/too complex.

I would gladly give up a few milliseconds when looking at a map region for the very first time for the benefit of getting rid of desktop tools and custom formats.

Two years from now, youll have to do withouth desktop conversion tools, because  fewer and fewer people will actually own a desktop computer. So in my opinion, time & work spent on desktop tools is simply wasted in the long run.

Note that the cpu and battery intensive conversions would only have to be done ONCE on the mobile... or whenever the tile server cache is cleared. So its not a battery nor a speed issue really. The important thing here is that everything happens seemlessly on android and the user is never ever bothered with desktop tools. Hell... desktops are dying anyway, mobile horsepower is increasing by the minute, so why not think into this direction?