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can you tell me how I can learn modify map themes?
I mean one time I saw an online editor...

As far as a I know, there is no editor for map themes...

But I can point you in the direction of some information that will tell you what you need to know:

https://github.com/mapsforge/mapsforge/blob/master/docs/Rendertheme.md

This gives a good background to creating XML theme files. the following gives you some LocusMap specific information too:

https://docs.locusmap.eu/doku.php?id=manual:advanced:map_tools:theming

In additional you will need a good text editor. I can highly recommend NotePad++ which is what I am using (the portable version, so I can keep it on a USB stick and use on any machine).

I have installed into Notepad++ a plugin called "Quick Color picker +" which allows you to modify the hex colors directly in the theme with a pop-up colour picker. You can find the plugin at:

https://github.com/nulled666/nppqcp/

I would suggest starting with modifying an existing theme that is for v3 maps, as the render engine for v4  is very intolerant to syntax errors and will refuse to display anything when one is found.

Good luck.

If no-one wants to work a v4 Waymark theme then I might consider to take on the challenge, but at the moment I am focussing all my spare time on converting my OS Map theme to v4. This has been going well so far because I am furloughed off work at the moment, but I return to work next week, so progress will slow then... So it could be weeks or months before I have time to look at other themes...

I have got a little distracted with the Waymark-V4a theme file - it bothers me when something needs fixing... I got the cycleways, hiking routes and waymark symbols displaying. I have now put the new Waymark-V4a.xml file into its own new [Theme] post.

Now I really must get back to completing the port of my OS Map v3 theme to v4 maps...

In the following post I used a script to semi-automatically convert the Waymark-V2a LoMap theme to be compatible with the MF v4 map theme renderer, i.e. so it would "work" with v4 maps:

https://forum.locusmap.eu/index.php?topic=6948.msg59452#msg59452

I used the Waymark-V2a theme purely as a test of the script as it is quite a large theme file, and it "worked" with v4 maps, in so much that it is displayed something. However it was pointed out that it didn't display the hiking trails, cycle routes or waymark symbols.

I started to look at why and realised that the Waymark-V2a theme was developed purely for Locus Map maps and did not appear to support OAMaps. I have made some further tweaks to the converted version from the link above and got the cycleways, hiking routes and waymarks to display now. You can also select/deselect the hiking/cycle routes. However, I do not think it will be possible to deselect waymark symbols for specific OSMC colour routes. For now, the theme only switches on/off all waymark symbols. Also not finding a way to not show trails when waymark routes are selected - other than overdraw the trails, but the route labels still show... so I left it alone for now).

I've not packaged it up into a ZIP with all the resources yet, because it is really just an experimental theme at this stage which will require some more testing/feedback, especially considering the original is set up for LoMap tags and not OAMap tags. There will probably be many other missing items for this reason. Probably a Waymark-V2a user will spot them very quickly!

To try it you will need to have the Waymark-V2a theme already installed and also a v4 map that supports OSMC waymarks (the UK maps I use do not).

You just need to copy the attached Waymark-V4a.xml and Waymark-V4a.png files into the same directory as the original Waymark-V2a.xml theme file is stored (will depend on where you chose to install Locus Maps I suspect).  Will be something like:

/storage/6345-6342/Android/data/menion.android.locus.pro/files/Locus/mapsVector/_themes/Waymark-V2a/
/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/menion.android.locus.pro/files/Locus/mapsVector/_themes/Waymark-V2a/

I'm wondering if there is any point using the Waymark theme, now that Elevate 4 supports Waymarks...

I've been testing out my partially completed  v4 theme and tried it with the ML v4 Rheinland-pfalz map. This map appears to behave differently from others I tried. On this map the map-background set in the rendertheme tag is used for most of the background.

This is not a major problem for most themes, except for my theme which relies on k="natural" v="nosea|land" being used to provide full coverage of land because the theme uses a darker background for the "night mode" card.

Attached are a couple of screenshots showing map-background set to #800000 and the other #f8f8f8 using my theme so far. However for night mode I need the background to be #373737.

I also tested map-background on OutdoorV4 and got the same results.

Anyone else spotted this on some maps?

Is there a way of varying the background on maps like these? or is the map-background setting always used. If this is the case, then I will have split my OS Map theme for v4 into two separate themes, one for day and one for night...

If no-one wants to work a v4 Waymark theme then I might consider to take on the challenge, but at the moment I am focussing all my spare time on converting my OS Map theme to v4. This has been going well so far because I am furloughed off work at the moment, but I return to work next week, so progress will slow then... So it could be weeks or months before I have time to look at other themes...

Regarding changing zoom levels, you have to consider what tags are used and what zoom level the map elements appear at, this is different for different maps. Maps are usually provided with a tag-mapping xml file that defines what tags are used and when they appear.

Thank you very much for your work, as I miss the theme for V4 maps and I can imagine how much work it is.

I've not actually spent much effort on the Waymark theme. Apart from finding syntax errors, the script did all the work.

I have noticed, the V4a / Cycling does not unfortunately display the cycle networks at any zoom yet.

As said, the Waymark-V2a theme was developed for LoMap v3 maps. The converted version may well not display everything correctly in v4 maps if the maps use different tagging rules.

I don't know if ManfredG is still maintaining the Waymark-V2a theme anymore... or if they wish to work on a v4 theme... If not, perhaps someone who uses the theme extensively might like to use the converted version as a good starting point?

Another possibility is to create a map file that is actually a legend, this would then automatically show the current theme and would be easy to scroll and zoom  around...

Another candidate is the Waymark v2a theme.

In another post I provided an example of using a script to semi-automatically convert outdoor and Waymark v2a locus map v3 map themes into v4 map themes for locus map. Here is a link to the post:

https://forum.locusmap.eu/index.php?topic=6948.msg59452#msg59452

I hope ManfredG doesn't mind me using his Waymark-v2a theme as a guinea-pig. It might not work perfectly in v4 maps and certainly hasn't been checked rigorously. But it would probably make a good starting for point for creating a v4 map version of the Waymark-v2a theme... But note, it is a very large theme consisting of over 8700 lines!   

If you wish to try out any of these converted themes, you should be able to copy the v4 xml file into the directory containing the original v3 theme file, if you are using the latest version of Locus Map as this now seems to support multiple theme files in the same directory. 

If you really want to use the converted theme and want the same icon, you could create a copy of the PNG icon file with the same name as the v4 theme.

Here is an example of adding customization code to the script. I used the Outdoor theme from locus store which works with v3 maps because it is a very small and simple theme (only 1400 lines).

In the customisation section of the script is uses the keys and values of rules in the theme to isolate and apply specific modifications to certain tags and their attributes, e.g.:

      if inscope(current_keys, "highway") then
         if current(current_vals) = "motorway_junction" then
            if current_tag = "circle" then
               line = update_tag(line, "r", 1.5, 0)
               line = update_tag(line, "stroke-width", 2, 0)
            end if
            if current_tag = "caption" then
               line = update_tag(line, "font-size", 1, 3)
               if instr(line,"caption k="+Chr(34)+"addr:housenumber"+Chr(34)) > 0 then
                  line = update_tag(line, "dy", 0, 0)
               end if
            end if
         end if
      end if

This looks for lines of the theme that are in scope of k="highway" v="motorway_junction" and then tweaks:
   - the circle's radius and stroke-width
   - its caption's  font-size and dy offset (but only for addr:housenumbers captions).

Here is the theme content before from v3:

<!-- highway exits -->
<rule e="node" k="highway" v="motorway_junction" zoom-min="11" zoom-max="13">
   <circle r="6" scale-radius="false" fill="#dFdFFF" stroke="#FF0000" stroke-width="2.0"/>
</rule>
<rule e="node" k="highway" v="motorway_junction" zoom-min="14">
   <circle r="6" scale-radius="true" fill="#dFdFFF" stroke="#FF0000" stroke-width="1.2"/>
   <caption k="addr:housenumber" display="always" dx="-2" dy="10" priority="95" font-style="bold" font-size="6dp" fill="#FF0000" stroke="#FFFF00" stroke-width="1.2dp" scale-font-size="14,1.3"/>
   <caption k="name" display="always" dy="-14dp" scale-dy-size="16,1.2" font-style="bold" font-size="7dp" fill="#0100C8" stroke="#FFFFFF" stroke-width="1.2dp" scale-font-size="14,1.3"/>
</rule>

and after in the converted v4 version:

<!-- highway exits -->
<rule e="node" k="highway" v="motorway_junction" zoom-min="10" zoom-max="12">
   <circle r="2.7" scale-radius="false" fill="#dFdFFF" stroke="#FF0000" stroke-width="0.9"/>
</rule>
<rule e="node" k="highway" v="motorway_junction" zoom-min="13">
   <circle r="2.7" scale-radius="true" fill="#dFdFFF" stroke="#FF0000" stroke-width="0.54"/>
   <caption k="addr:housenumber" display="always" dy="0" priority="95" font-style="bold" font-size="9" fill="#FF0000" stroke="#FFFF00" stroke-width="1.08" />
   <caption k="name" display="always" dy="-14" font-style="bold" font-size="10" fill="#0100C8" stroke="#FFFFFF" stroke-width="1.08" />
</rule>

I should point out that the stroke-width of circles also have a scale of 0.9 and 0.25 applied to it elsewhere in the script, hence 2 * 0.9 * 0.25 * 2 = 0.9. As you can guess, I was just applying correction by trial error until things looked reasonable...

Note the parameters for update_tag are:
   - update_tag( line, tag_name, scale, offset )
and it applies a scale and offset to numerical tag values. E.g. The following line:

         line = update_tag(line, "font-size", 2, -4)

when applied to the following theme line:

   <pathText k="name" font-style="bold" font-size="9" fill="#606060" stroke="#ffffff" stroke-width="2.0"/>

will result in the font-size being processed as:  new-font-size = (old-font-size * 2) - 4 = 14. i.e.:

   <pathText k="name" font-style="bold" font-size="14" fill="#606060" stroke="#ffffff" stroke-width="2.0"/>.

The script has a variable called "zoom_offset" which is set to -1 in this example. It subtracts 1 from all the zoom-min and zoom-max values to readjust the v4 converted theme to look similar in scales as the original v3 theme. Of course, if there are map elements that appear at zoom level 14, the will not appear at zoom level 13 in the v4 map.

The screenshots show the original v3 Outdoor theme, converted to v4 theme and the original OutdoorV4 theme.



I'm posting the converted outdoor theme only as an example of what the script can do. I haven't checked it extensively and you are probably better off using the official OutdoorV4 theme.

Attached is the Waymark-V2a theme in two forms:
   - Waymark-V4.xml is converted using the attached version of the v3_to_v4_Waymark.vbs script.
   - Waymark-V4a.xml is after some manual tweaks, read on...

the V4 of the theme is straight out of the script from V2a, with just one customisation to correct a syntax error:

      line = replace_text(line, "case="+Chr(34), "cat="+Chr(34) )

In the screenshots you can see that V4 has a rendering problem with service|raceway roads. I fixed this manually in V4a.



The script pseudo-converts the v3 extensions for rectangle captions using a thick outlined caption, as these are not supported in v4 mapsforge rendering engine.

The other thing you'll notice is when you switch to a v4 map the zoom level is out by 1, and you can see that some items that render at Z16, do not render at Z15, hence screenshot 4 shows them appearing as you zoom in to Z16.

Note that I have not checked if everything else in the theme works or not. But it probably is a good starting point now for getting a v4 map version of the Waymark-V2a theme working, if required.

At the moment I'm converting my OS Map theme from v3 to v4. I have been finding the process very mechanical and repetitive, so much so that once I I done around 2,500 lines out of 10,000 lines by hand I decided to quick put together a script to do most of the changes programatically. 

Attached is a VBScipt that does most of the changes required to convert a v3 theme to v4.

I quickly discovered that  v4 render engine is very intolerant to syntax errors and if any are present it will refuse to display anything. This means manually removing parts of the generated v4 theme until it works and locating the syntax error. The following are some examples of errors I found in several themes:
   - stroke-width="1.2p"
   - <rule case="off_pl"
   - close="yes"  (should be closed="yes")

I have converted the following themes using the script, in some cases requiring some additional custom mods:
   - OS Map
   - Outdoor (because it is small, simple and already has a v4 theme to compare with)
   - Waymark2a

I would consider the output of the script as a starting point only and not a final theme. In some cases it is possible to tweak the theme using the script, see the Outdoor script for an example. In some cases there are differences that have to manually changed in the generated theme. Waymark2a is an example of this, seems the v4 rendering in LoMaps has a bug, the following puts green dashes on service roads as well as raceways:

<rule e="way" k="highway" v="service|raceway" zoom-min="14">
   <line stroke="#ffffff" stroke-width="0.81" />
   <rule e="way" k="highway" v="raceway" zoom-min="14">
      <line stroke="#a5cba5" stroke-width="0.54" scale="all" stroke-dasharray="1,1" stroke-linecap="butt" />
   </rule>
   :

so I had to manually separate service and raceway rules to fix this:

<!-- service raceway -->
<rule e="way" k="highway" v="service" zoom-min="14">
   <line stroke="#ffffff" stroke-width="0.81" />
   :
<rule e="way" k="highway" v="raceway" zoom-min="14">
   <line stroke="#ffffff" stroke-width="0.81" />
   <line stroke="#a5cba5" stroke-width="0.54" scale="all" stroke-dasharray="1,1" stroke-linecap="butt" />
   :


I'll add the converted Outdoor and Waymark example themes in the next few posts. I'm using the initial conversion of my OS Map theme as a starting point for a v4 OS Map theme. I'm about 50% complete so far, but am battling with lack of symbol and text scaling in v4...

Please note that this script is a quick hack, there are probably better ways using XML libraries to do this... It does no error checking and you'll probably need to modify it for best results. It is a visual basic script and should work on a Windows command line using the following command line syntax:

     cscript v3_to_v4.vbs <v3 rendertheme>.xml <v4 rendertheme>.xml

Where:

        v3_to_v4.vbs                 -- Name of this script
        <v3 rendertheme>.xml         -- Input file that is a v3 rendertheme file, e.g. VoluntaryV3.xml
        <v4 rendertheme>.xml         -- Output file to be created as a v4 rendertheme file, e.g. VoluntaryV4.xml


Just putting this out there in case it is useful to other theme writers. It isn't really suitable for most people to use, but anyone with a basic understanding of visual basic and renderthemes should be OK.
I would check the examples in the following posts for examples of how to use the custom coding section and supporting functions...

Karl.

I will look into borders. I have mainly focused on UK usage and put in support for borders on admin_levels of 4=country, 6=county, 8=districts and 10=parish. However, it seems the UK maps only support country borders....

I updated the theme to include admin levels 2 and 3 together with existing used level 4 to the country borders, this seems to work. I hope this is the correct interpretation of admin levels...

But I think it would better to use an extra option for hiding, because I want see land access (without restricted area)
And....I have realize that you forget to show borders :-)

Land access is shown separately from restricted areas, see attached which shows the two areas overlapping.

I will look into borders. I have mainly focused on UK usage and put in support for borders on admin_levels of 4=country, 6=county, 8=districts and 10=parish. However, it seems the UK maps only support country borders.... Perhaps if I got this wrong someone can hint what the correct mappings of admin_levels should be... perhaps some of the unused levels are used in other maps...?

The "purple markers" are to highlight or emphasise protected areas that might have restricted access. In the UK they seem to match quite closely the OS map land access areas.

You can deselect them in the overlay options of the theme by unticking "emphasise land access".