Feature Requests

[bdbcat]

Gerhard...

Why do you say things like this?

Have a look in Flyspray, you will find that this bug is fixed, awaiting the next Beta, coming soon.

FS#1655 : WP Mac - Some characters cannot be typed in waypoint description

If you can build from source ( I think you can), you will find it fixed. If it is not fixed for you, then make a comment in Flyspray. If it is fixed OK for you in github, then wait for the next Beta like everyone else.

Please don't mislead new users. Please check your facts.

Dave

[CarCode]

Nice to see you finally released 4.1.602 so Mac users doesn't need to use anymore the buggy version 4.0.0.
However why do you use different code in 4.1.602 grib plugin for Windows and Mac? Both grib plugin versions are 2.3 but shows in Windows the ugly new style dialogs while the Mac version shows the better old style dialogs.

Gerhard

[nohal]

Gerhard...
We do it to make you happy and punish the Windows users for not getting a real operating system.
But don't cry for them, they sure deserve it.

Pavel


Sent from my iPhone using Cruisers Sailing Forum

[Hakan]

Pffft...
As usual? Win - clean and functional, Mac - fancy and artistic, Linux - stands behind and laugh. - We all deserve

[hasse_A]

It would be nice if you could create a virtual com port from OpenCPN and not just standard hard wire COM ports.
I use Airmail and could then let position, water and wind speed e.t.c. be feed to Airmail. As it is today I have to place GPSGate in between.
B.t.w. GPSGate costs money.
/Hans

[nohal]

Hans...
I would say it is not very likely to happen unless you are interested in doing it - it is very platform specific (actually Windows only). Well educated tools are able to use network sockets instead. And there are readily available free tools to accomplish it with features we would hardly be able to do at all (Eterlogic - VSPE: tool for serial ports emulation or Null-modem emulator (com0com) - virtual serial port driver for Windows for example)

Pavel

[hasse_A]

Thanks Pavel.

At the moment I am at sea using the AIS functionality. I am not happy with the way the alarm behaves. A target can come in and out of the set time since the speed of my sailing vessel varies. The result is that you have to confirm it numerous times.
There should be some kind of backlash. The target should not go inactive unless the distance rehashes for instance 10% grater than the set value once the alarm is set.

/Hans

[HenrikB]

Originally Posted by hasse_A

Thanks Pavel.

At the moment I am at sea using the AIS functionality. I am not happy with the way the alarm behaves. A target can come in and out of the set time since the speed of my sailing vessel varies. The result is that you have to confirm it numerous times.
There should be some kind of backlash. The target should not go inactive unless the distance rehashes for instance 10% grater than the set value once the alarm is set.

/Hans

That is a very good idea!

It would also be very good if there was a possibility to create a "favorite list" of vessels. If I go into the list and seclect "track target", the trackning goes off if the target is out and then comes back again.

[nohal]

Henrik...
Not sure I understand, isn't Setting Options | Official OpenCPN Homepage doing exactly what you are asking for (and more)?

Pavel

[HenrikB]

Originally Posted by nohal

Henrik...
Not sure I understand, isn't Setting Options | Official OpenCPN Homepage doing exactly what you are asking for (and more)?

Pavel

You are completly right, I should read the manual better
Thank you for pointing it out!

[monte]

I find when I set target tracking for a longer period like 360 minutes, it always reverts itself back to 60 minutes. A bug maybe? Latest version.

[Wanderlust]

While doing some testing for FS1717 (Underwater Rocks objects not being displayed), I was thinking more about how important some of those settings are. Yet they can be switched off so easily, and not noticed.

Primarily, I'm thinking about which chart objects get displayed. There is an option to select Mariner's Standard, and intuitively, due to its name, one would expect this to be a good compromise between clutter and safety. It would have been developed as the most suitable for the typical mariner.

Not so. By default only 3 out of over 200 objects are selected for display and these selections are not adequate for safe navigation in coastal areas. Someone unknowingly choosing that option believing it to be the most suitable could easily come to grief.

I would like to use Mariner's Standard so I can customise what I see, but at present it's too difficult to know what I MUST have displayed (those that would ruin my day if I hit one). However, if I want to see depth countours I either choose the ALL template (too cluttered) or customise Mariner's Standard. I'm sure there are plenty of others in that category.

But what if I do spend all the time to customise it, and then a curious crew member accidentally resets them all, or worse, tries to recover and misses some. I could even do the same myself and never notice my omission.

So I have three related requests.

1. Either rename Mariner's Standard or highlight all the recommended safety objects that a typical mariner would want and select them as default.
2. Provide a button to reset selected objects to default.
3. Create a "My customised settings" option that can be easily reinstated at will. I can forsee that some people would like more than one configuration for coastal or offshore, etc. A small warning indicator would be useful to highlight if the current config difers from my saved settings. If it was broader than just chart objects that would be better.

Before I raise a Flyspray request I'm interested in other opinions on this or if something similar is in the list. I notice FS551 raised 4 years ago is related, asking for a drop down list of user defined options. As this is actually a safety issue rather than just convenience, I suggest the ideas deserve a fresh look.

[RhythmDoctor]

Before I request a new feature in FlySpray, I wanted to get your input on whether you think this would be best added in the main program or in a plug-in.

I would like to see an option to have OpenCPN keep a self-refreshing cache of all NMEA sentences for a user-selectable time (default to 5 minutes). While the VDR plugin does this, you have to manually turn it on ahead of time, and manually turn it off to prevent it from becoming unreasonably large.

The self-refreshing cache would enable you to decide after-the-fact whether you would like to save a history of what just happened. By making it self-refreshing, it would not grow infinitely large, even if you left it running constantly. Once saved, it could be played back by VDR to observe the location of all boats as an event happened.

By way of background, I was nearly swamped by a 44 ft. cruiser who passed me going 24 knots less than 60 feet away. I did save his track, as well as my own. But I was not recording on VDR. It would have been nice if I could have saved a cache after-the-fact to have the ability to play back what happened, and see the actual boat icons moving relative to each other, and alarms that I was receiving. (At the time, I was too busy preparing for his 4 ft wake to be able to look at any alarms.)

Here are the tracks:

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by RhythmDoctor

Before I request a new feature in FlySpray, I wanted to get your input on whether you think this would be best added in the main program or in a plug-in.

This should either be a new plugin, or added to the vdr plugin. I think it needs just an option for how much time to keep nmea messages, and toolbar button to save it to a file.

[RhythmDoctor]

Originally Posted by boat_alexandra

This should either be a new plugin, or added to the vdr plugin. I think it needs just an option for how much time to keep nmea messages, and toolbar button to save it to a file.

This is so different from the way VDR recording works that adding the options might actually be confusing. Although the saved file should be in a format that VDR can be used to play it back.

The reason that I thought that the feature should be put in the main program is that there is probably already a buffer somewhere with the stream information (for purposes of displaying everything on the screen in real time), so saving that buffer to a file might be straightforward.