Google Earth Plugin

[nohal]

Originally Posted by sinbad7

Pavel/Paul

As I suggested earlier,why not use a right click drop down box for present and future facilities and leave the GE map area clean?

Would nice but is not possible - on the GE view, the mouse events go to GE directly, not to the plugin.

Pavel

[nohal]

Originally Posted by phiggins

I see what you mean, the saved JPG does have both the buttons and some other junk below it. If I used that JPG in GE2KAP, I wouldn't be able to tell where the actual GE picture ended.

Pavel, can you save just the GE picture?

Working on it, but it's a little bit more complicated than it might seem. The buttons are there because they overlap the bottom part of the GE viewport (on some systems, not mine - depends on the visual theme you use for Windows and if you turned off the GE toolbar or not). Unfortunately I must resize the whole GE window - including the parts that are not even displayed to get the right size of the view - because of that you have to turn off the sidebar and toolbar of ge and because of that the problem we see here...

Pavel

[sinbad7]

Pavel..

Sorry if I am stating the obvious,but,could we not make use of the GE keys?
To save a .jpg: Ctrl+Alt+S
To save in klm: Ctrl+S

Tore

[BluegillBoy]

Originally Posted by deltasig

Congratulations on the great work so far.
I managed couple of times to get the GE plugin window to stay within the OpenCPN window and have the two show the same area; I don't know how I did it but I can't do it again What's the trick?

You might be referring to docking the plugin window. Grab the top of the GE window with a left mouse click held down and drag the GE window way to the left - it locks/docks in place - then both windows are in synch and your location is in the middle of each window.

It's a little touchy (doesn't always doc on first try) and seems to be dependent on the size the GE window is before docking.

If you dock with a GE window smaller in height than the area between the OCPN tool bar and the bottom bar showing the quilted charts, it will dock leaving the bottom charts bar full width. If you enlarge the GE window to be the same height as the chart portion between the top and bottom OCPN tool bars before docking, then it docks larger and the bottom chart tool bar only runs as wide as the OCPN chart.

To undock, just grab the top of the GE window and pull it to the right.

Is that what you were looking for?

PS - docking works with other plugins as well.

[sinbad7]

Pavel.. #197

I am using GE plugin v. 0.3 and OpenCPN 2.4.324 which is working perfectly for me on Vista. By dragging the top frame of the initial GE screen,I can enlarge the display to cover the entire screen so the save options at the bottom only have a barely visible top edge,necessary to effect the saving process.

I now select 'Save .JPG' and minimize the GE display without disturbing it further and execute GE2KAP which collects the geo references from GE and creates the .kap map from the saved .jpg file.

You now have a calibrated GE map without a visible white bottom border.

The created 'charts' are no substitute for regular nautical charts but serves as valuable extra information of ports you intend to visit. They are also handy when no other charts are available.

For me,this is now working perfectly and also very quickly.

Tore

[BluegillBoy]

Lovin V0.3!

one thing I see is in the preferences window, some lines of text overlay others. see attached screen grab. also, when going to save as JPG, the dialogue window says "open" when it means "save". little thing - the feature works!!

[sinbad7]

BluegillBoy..

I don't see the overlapping text error in my Vista version 0.3.

Just another tip. Often the selected GE area has a bad cloud coverage. In this case,save the image in .kml format. Exit from OpenCPN and execute the .kml file which will start GE in the area selected. Use the 'Historical imagery' to select views from earlier years which may be better and save in .jpg format. Hold the GE view but you may use a graphic editor to enhance the saved .jpg file without changing it¨s size.
Finally,execute GE2KAP which will create your .kap chart.

Tore

[deltasig]

Sinbad7,
Thank you for all the tips and tricks about GE. I've been using GE for a very long time and never got past the obvious features. I learned more about it trying to use it with OpenCPN than at any time before.

BluegillBoy,
Thank you for the docking tip. I must have stumbled on it when I was trying to reposition the GE screen.

I use the Mapsource product for planing purposes and have 2 GPSMAP units (a fixed and a portable). I found the ability to view (and if finalized, save) a WP or a route from Mapsource on GE by clicking on View-GE very useful. I understand there is a way with OCPN to do the same but I didn't find it yet !

Any pointers, greatly appreciated.

[sinbad7]

Hi all..

How do you write a batch file to execute the following:??

@ECHO OFF
REM - AUTOMATING GE PLUGIN WITH GE2KAP
:BEGIN
CLS
START D:\PROGRAM FILES\KML WRITER\Balboa.kml
TYPE NUL | CHOICE.COM /N /CY /TY,20 >NUL (wait 20 seconds)
SAVE D:\PROGRAM FILES\GE2KAP\Balboa.jpg (CTRL ALT S in Google Earth)
TYPE NUL | CHOICE.COM /N /CY /TY,20 >NUL (wait 6 seconds)
START D:\PROGRAM FILES\GE2KAP\GE2KAP.rex
:END

Tore

[nohal]

Originally Posted by deltasig

I use the Mapsource product for planing purposes and have 2 GPSMAP units (a fixed and a portable). I found the ability to view (and if finalized, save) a WP or a route from Mapsource on GE by clicking on View-GE very useful. I understand there is a way with OCPN to do the same but I didn't find it yet !

Any pointers, greatly appreciated.

Export as GPX from OpenCPN's routemanager and then open the exported file in GE.
When the API for plugins will be extended with access to the navobjects, the plugin will do it without this manual step.

Pavel

[deltasig]

Pavel,
Thank you for the tip. After trying it, I find that the time slider appears due to <time> entries. Is this a requested feature (?!) and is there an option not to export the <time>?
Also, do I understand correctly that the discrepancy between the route line on the CM93 and GE is due to some problem with the beta version of OpenCPN?

[nohal]

Originally Posted by deltasig

Thank you for the tip. After trying it, I find that the time slider appears due to <time> entries. Is this a requested feature (?!) and is there an option not to export the <time>?

Yes, it is definitely a feature request for GE authors. And you are not the only person having this request As they usually don't care at all what we want GE to do, someone already wrote a tool to remove time from GPX - more about it and a link at Removing Time Data Out Of A GPX Or KML File To Make It Work Right In Google Earth

Also, do I understand correctly that the discrepancy between the route line on the CM93 and GE is due to some problem with the beta version of OpenCPN?

Yes you understand correctly, should be fixed in 2.4.412 released a while ago.

Pavel

[manimaul]

Pavel,

I've linked many of your published plugins on the PlugIns | Official OpenCPN Homepage page. It would be great if you could update your plugins on this page when possible. Please email or PM me if you need FTP access etc.

Will

[nohal]

Will...
Thanks a lot, that page looked a bit abandoned lately

Pavel

[Gilletarom]

Hello,

ASUS W XP SP3, 10' 2.4.412 and plug-in GE

1° When I click for turn on plug-in GE in the toolbox, a white window is openned. But, GE do not run.

See attach file

2° When i use the icon of GE in the iconbar, GE run correctly.

BUT

If I docked the window of GE, there is a problem of refresh with 2.4.412.

See attach file