[Roadster] Re: GPS

[Ian McIntosh]

Hi Steven,

Welcome to the list.

> community map builder:  http://mapbuilder.sourceforge.net/

I'll check it out, but there's a lot to read there; are you already
familiar with it?  Are they working on adding routing information?

> Also, have you thought about marrying your excellent route rendering code
> to a more established GPS/GIS/Navigation project?

I was familiar with these projects when I started work on Roadster.
Here is why I felt a new one was necessary:

>  GPSDrive:
>  http://www.kraftvoll.at/software/

GPSDrive downloads maps from expedia/mapblast.  The legality of this is
questionable.  I'm not at all confident about the future availability of
this data.  For that reason alone it wasn't a suitable solution for me.
(I also don't like the look of expedia/mapblast's maps!)

Plus, you can't search for addresses, makes routes, etc.

>  Roadmap:
>  http://roadmap.digitalomaha.net/

I'm quite familiar with Roadmap (their source code helped me understand
the TIGER format).  

The main issue I have is their use of a custom database.  A ton of the
code is devoted to reading and writing the database, seemingly so it
will run well on a handheld device.  But I'm not confident that it's
scalable, at least not without a lot of work.  (It also produces wrong
results-- try zooming in on a long road such that the end points are
outside the window-- the road disappears, but perhaps this is fixable).

Also, the graphics API they chose doesn't support rotated text
(Cairo/Pango may not have been around when they started). So that's a
show-stopper in my book.

So I could have taken Roadmap, changed the DB backend, added a more
robust GUI, and completely changed the rendering framework, and then
added things like road-hugging road labels.  But that's pretty much
everything.

>  Navsys Mapeditor:
>  http://www.navsys.org/mapeditor/

I've been chatting with the author of Mapeditor on irc.gnome.org.  I
think he has some things to teach me about GIS, but Roadster and
Mapeditor seem to have different goals.

>  Summary of a Variety of GPS/GIS software for Linux:
>  http://tuxmobil.org/navigation_gps.html

Good link, thanks.  And hopefully we can get listed there.

Overall, I would love to collaborate with all of these projects where
possible, but our goals are different enough that I think the projects
should remain separate.  Of course, since it's under the GPL, they are
welcome to use Roadster's road rendering code if they like.

-Ian