tangoGPS

Hello, once again it is time for a new release.

Before anyting:

I'll be around the GNOME stand - drop by and say hello!

So what are the improvements this time? Well, there is already one thing that was since long overdue: the repository dialog has finally got a sane layout making it easy and a good deal more intuitive to change the repository or to enter a new one.

Furthermore tangoGPS is now gracefully handling bad NMEA output from various GPS chips, which has been the source of crashers for some of you.

Then we have some more code for the POIs (Points of Interest) which now allows the handling of large collections of POIs, for example 50000 FON locations of Europe  are now quickly displayed.

The pop-up window "this point" now lets you select the text, so you easily copy coordinates into another application.

Among the bug fixes there is one for correctly displaying the GPS coordinates if you are in the southern hemisphere or east of Greenwich.

Some things that got improved due to user requests:

• there is now a command line switch to start in fullscreen mode (-fullscreen)
• two new keyboard shortcuts for zooming in and out: "i" and "o" because the eeePC has no dedicated PageUp and PageDown keys
• the geophotos are now bigger (240px)

Last not least pretty much all Google maps are now supported including satellite imagery - simply because Google has changed the addressing scheme which is now the same as for Openstreetmap. But beware, they are copyrighted and Google quickly blocks your access. Moreover they can cut you off at any time, therefore it is a lot better to use and contribute to open maps!

A really great rendering of Openstreetmap is Opencycle Map created by Andy Allen and Dave Stubs. The URI for the repository is http://a.andy.sandbox.cloudmade.com/tiles/cycle/%d/%d/%d.png.

Here is a screenshot:



The digest of changes:

• there is now a simply track loader
• the tracking status is save, i.e. after restart it will write tracklogs if it did so before
• the repository dialog has finally got a sane layout
• auto switch to map after changing the repository
• the nmea parser now handles many broken GPSes gracefully (this was a source of crashers for some people)
• the POI display now uses a bounding box. This allows for speedy handling of tens of thousands of POIs
• min 1m/s to display speed
• selectable this point info
• opencycle map added as default repo
• google sat support (because google change URI scheme)
• lat/lon fix display (now correct in eastern and souther hemisphere)
• command line switch -fullscreen
• new keyboard shortcuts i and o for zooming in and out
• geophoto bigger and closes on click
• bulgarian translation 

Kudos go to:

Svetoslav Stefanov - Bulgarian translation
Thomas Schönhütel - for finally making me releasing 0.9.5

Thanks for donation to:

Alexander Fougner
Seth Rothenberg
Ortwin Regel
Olivier Berger
Atlas Trade Group
Dmitri Popov
LUKAS KRAEHENBUEHL
Carlo Minucci
richard west
Francesco Gabrielli
Thomas Siegl
Thomas Schönhütel
Nico

If I forgot someone (quite likely) - please drop me a line and I'll add you.


Have fun!
Marcus