Route_pi New Finished Plugin for OpenCPN

[SaltyPaws]

Dear OpenCPNers,

I present to you a route-plugin for OpenCPN. The purpose of this plugin is to provide Great Circle, Limited Circle and Rhumb line plotting capability to OpenCPN. The plugin will show you: difference between great circle route, rhumb line and limited circle distance. It will also generate a route (GPX) for you, with way-points as per your requirement.

Code is hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/SaltyPaws/route_pi

Ubuntu 32 and 64 bit binary files are here: https://github.com/SaltyPaws/route_p...aster/binaries

Please email me your windows and OSX binaries, so I can also host these.

[Gilletarom]

Hello Salty Paws

I Have enter two point :
Start point : Long 45 N; Lat 5 O
End point : Long 55 N; Lat 35 0

When I use the button "Convert to degree", ther is no difference from 5 O and 5 E so the routes are not good !

Best regards

Gilletarom

[cagney]

Originally Posted by Gilletarom

Hello Salty Paws

I Have enter two point :
Start point : Long 45 N; Lat 5 O
End point : Long 55 N; Lat 35 0

When I use the button "Convert to degree", ther is no difference from 5 O and 5 E so the routes are not good !

Best regards

Gilletarom

There seems to be a bug, when the values for minutes and seconds of arc are left blank. If you fill in the blank fields with "0", then the results are correct.
I had expected to be able to fill in the decimal fields directly, but get an error message if the degree,minutes and seconds fields shows an other position.
It would be nice with a reset button, that deleted all the entered values.

Apart from this, the plugin works OK, and has a couple of features that OpenCPNs new built-in Great-circle handler lacks. Such as ... the ability to handle composite routes, called "Limited Circle Route" for some reason, and specify the length of each leg.
The plugin also generates gpx files for Rhumb Lines, as well.

Thanks SaltyPaws, great addition to the plugins.

Thomas

[SaltyPaws]

I have just updated the plugin to be more friendly when a negative or no waypoint distance is specified. I will have a look, and make the plugin fill out the blanks for the next update, to fix the bug specified above. Please report any other bugs and inconsistencies in this thread as well. Any other features suggested for this plugin.

[Gilletarom]

Hello,

Originally Posted by SaltyPaws

I have just updated the plugin to be more friendly when a negative or no waypoint distance is specified. ......

Give us a link for download binary file for windows.

thank by advance.

Gilletarom

[rgleason]

Saltypaws

Will this work with the current beta version 3.1.919 under Win7 if I download via git and compile it?

JesperWe advises that running plugins is tricky in compiled betas...

[JesperWe]

Originally Posted by rgleason

JesperWe advises that running plugins is tricky in compiled betas...

No, I advise running plugins in Debug builds is tricky, independent of beta or not.

If you do a Release build there should be no problems.

[rgleason]

Thankyou Salty Paws.

[Gilletarom]

Hello SaltyPaws

No link for download the last version ... ?

B.R.

Gilletarom.

[SaltyPaws]

binaries are linked from plugin page (Thank you Nohal!)

Bug reported by Gilletarom has been fixed in the latest version. Please keep bug reports and suggestions for improvement coming

[NAV]

Updated Dutch language file for the route plugin

[SamsonovAnton]

The version 1.0 that is available on the official OpenCPN site, has several bugs.

1. Limited-circle route is not computed at all (appears to be empty) if the specified latitude limit is not reached. When this happens, the File Save dialog pops up 2 times in sequence, each time producing a GPX file with no waypoints; currently, OpenCPN may crash when trying to view an empty route properties.
2. Limited-circle route stops respecting the specified waypoint distance once the latitude limit is reached (see attached picture). In my opinion, the middle part between waypoints “Lat_limit1” and “Lat_limit2” should not contain any intermediate points at all, and the final part should use the same waypoint interval as the initial part.
3. If exporting a limited-circle route is canceled in the File Save dialog, then an error message is mistakenly displayed: “Error in calculation. Please check input!”. Great-circle and rhumb-line modes are not affected by this.
4. No matter whether the “.gpx” extension is specified upon exporting or not, the created file receives the doubled extension: “.gpx.gpx”. Perhaps, it's a Windows-only issue.
5. The “Decimal degree” tab has incorrectly spelled word “Lattitude”, which prevents it to be automatically translated by the main template.
6. The “Limited Circle” tab has incorrectly specified units “NM” for the latitude limit.

Additional suggestions:

1. If it's not very difficult, enhance itegration with the main program: allow importing of coordinate pairs from clipboard (like the “Paste lat/lon” acts in the waypoint properties dialog), and support exporting the created route to clipboard in KML format, so that external files would not be needed.
2. Use the same naming convention for waypoints of limited-circle routes as for great-circle and rhumb-line routes — the distance from starting point, not a sequential number. Or, even better, allow the user to choose sequential numbering if he/she plans to adjust the route manually.
3. If the last route-leg appears to be tiny in respect to others, then either combine it with the penultimate leg, or make them both of equal length. This also applies to the last leg of initial part of limited-circle route.
4. Make it more clear that the “Calculate” button is only needed to update the “Result” field group, and the user is not required to press it each time before exporting.
5. Make it more clear that the “° ′ ″” tab accepts decimal fractions for seconds of arc only, and that entering fractions elsewhere leads to discarding the rest, starting from the first unexpected separator. An explicit error message would be better than a silent truncation.

I hope this is an acceptable place to submit bug reports, as I could not find an appropriate section in the official bugtracker.

[rgleason]

SamsonovAnton,
Your reports are so thorough, and thoughtful, might I suggest registering on Flyspray or Tracker OpenCPN::Tracker All Projects: Tasklist and putting your observations and suggestions there, under the appropriate category so they aren't lost?

I am sure the programmers will appreciate the suggestions.

[SamsonovAnton]

Originally Posted by rgleason

I suggest registering on Flyspray and putting your observations and suggestions there, under the appropriate category so they aren't lost.

I'm already registered there and posted some reports, but could not find a specific section for plugins created by SaltyPaws — my guess is that not every plugin author is granted his/her own section on the official bugtracker, and thus have to rely on forums or e-mail. As for the “Plugin System” section, as far as I understand, it's meant for general questions on plugin API and for new feature requests that don't fit into core program. If I'm wrong, please, redirect me to a more proper place.

[nohal]

Anton...
For Salty's plugins you can sure use the trackers associated with the repositories at https://github.com/SaltyPaws/
In flyspray the plugin system tracker would perhaps work as well - anything is better than the forum where it pretty sure gets lost before someone finds time to resolve it.

Pavel