Ocpn-Draw and Boundary

[yoruk]

Merci Gérard
It was just an observation on the complexity of the plugin to date. I do not want to question the work of the author. But, the question was raised by NAV ago shortly. The areas of inclusion ( "no quit" area = ne pas quitter la zone) have no meaning in sailing, except for an anchorage, but then there are other solutions. In particular, an alarm on the XTE. In fact a series of exclusion zones ( "no enter" area = ne pas entrer en zone) will have the same effect ... see the attached screenshot.
Furthermore the inclusion of areas are incompatible with the routings ... Not ??? The solution adopted by SailGrib and his "nogozones") seems much better.

Michel, and sorry for my poor english. My french is better of course !!!

[jongough]

NAV,
I can easily change the text of the message in the WD dialog. Would 'Boat outside/inside anchor boundary area' be better?

Is the text in the popup message box OK?

Jon

Originally Posted by NAV

I'm happy with this method. In Dutch I choose to translate the string "Anchor Alarm" as "Distance to reference position", to make it more general and to prevent confusion with the anchor functionality of OpenCPN core.



This Boundary Anchor Alarm I renamed in Dutch to "Inside/Outside area" (more or less the same suggestion you mentioned, which, in my opinion makes things clearer). However, in the alarm window, it now indicates "Anchor Inside [or Outside] boundary [GUID]". So it seems to me that this alarm message uses a string from the standard Anchor Alarm.

I suggest not to use the part "Anchor" of the message string at all, or to use a different string.

[jongough]

Michel,
There was a specific request, or at least a discussion on useful features, about a year ago, for an area that you should not leave. This was requested by a user who was using OCPN for racing and wanted to define the area the boats MUST stay within and if they left the area they would suffer a penalty. Also, some users want to define a 'safe passage' through 'unsafe' waters and this can be done in three ways:

1. Define the 'safe' waters
2. Define the 'unsafe' waters
3. Define both

So again there was/is a need to show an area that the boat should stay in. There are certainly 'traffic' lanes in the English Channel that are shown on the charts but it would not be possible to set an alarm on these, as far as I know, without the use of the OD & WD plugins and boundaries appropriately marked.

I would also put an anchor zone (inclusion boundary) on your chart around your position. You could then have an alarm if you leave the anchor zone so that you know you are moving more than standard anchor swing. I would also put an alarm on the exclusion boundary so that you know you are entering dangerous waters, i.e. after you have picked up your anchor which is not holding and you want to find a better place in the same cove.

Originally Posted by yoruk

Merci Gérard
It was just an observation on the complexity of the plugin to date. I do not want to question the work of the author. But, the question was raised by NAV ago shortly. The areas of inclusion ( "no quit" area = ne pas quitter la zone) have no meaning in sailing, except for an anchorage, but then there are other solutions. In particular, an alarm on the XTE. In fact a series of exclusion zones ( "no enter" area = ne pas entrer en zone) will have the same effect ... see the attached screenshot.

I do not understand this, can you try explaining again?

Furthermore the inclusion of areas are incompatible with the routings ... Not ??? The solution adopted by SailGrib and his "nogozones") seems much better.

Michel, and sorry for my poor english. My french is better of course !!!

Also, your english is better than my French!

Jon

[yoruk]

Jon Hello, and thank you for your work.

1) We waited from a long time ago, a drawing's tool for OpenCPN
2) In any case, Never i will allow myself to criticize your work
3) I am working on a tutorial for OD, I became aware of its complexity. Complexity difficult to explain.
-
To answer you, and for an sailor's understanding, there are not 3 zones
- 'Safe' waters
- 'Unsafe' waters
- 'Both'

- For mapping, There is only one area: 'unsafe' waters ...
Everything else is safe, generally depending of the captain'age, his experience, crew and the boat's type ...
- For the mooring spots, it's the same thing: all that is not 'unsafe' is 'safe' ...
- For the TSZ 'Traffic Separation Zone'), they are totally 'unsafe' for a sailingboat, and prudence recommends to circumvent, for finding 'safe' waters ... this is normal, since they are not 'unsafe' of course
------------------------------

Furthermore the inclusion of areas are incompatible with the routings ... Not ??? The solution adopté by SailGrib and his "nogozones") Seems much better.

-------------------------------
Because the routing needs free water to search for the best speed option. In the example in the attached copy, and Gerard's map for bypass the Minquiers, SailGrib WR can define some 'nogozones', and routing cannot go inside. This done, he chose the best route, which will naturally be 'safe' waters ... this is normal, since he is not 'unsafe' course
Six 'nogozones', two routings for E Minquiers and W Minquiers
-------------------------------
Here, there are no negative criticism, it's just my opinion, in case it might be helpful

Michel, très cordialement

[NAV]

Originally Posted by jongough

I can easily change the text of the message in the WD dialog. Would 'Boat outside/inside anchor boundary area' be better?
Is the text in the popup message box OK?

Jon,

See pictures for (present) Dutch texts. In blue: my underlining and remarks.

"Boat outside/inside anchor boundary area" (where in Dutch now is shown: "Afstand referentiepositie Buiten gebiedsgrens [GUID]") is better, although personnally I would prefer to make it more general (e.g. "Boat inside [outside] boundary")".

Text in pop up (in Dutch) seems ok to me.

[bcn]

I would like to see a clear distinction between Odraw objects - which can be related to the movement of a boat (as EBL or DR, but even a point or an area might travel with the boat) or static - and the use of the drawn objects for other purposes or in other Plug-ins like Watchdog and (Automatic) Routing or Route checking.

In the latter usages the question of don't enter/don't leave (own boat or others) is getting interesting, but not in OD itself.

Hubert

[rgleason]

Guys, Gilletarom I am traveling today & tomorrow but will try to upate file thing later today.

[jongough]

NAV,
WD patch 1.9.036 changes the wording to remove, in English, the wording you underlined.

Jon

Originally Posted by NAV

Jon,

See pictures for (present) Dutch texts. In blue: my underlining and remarks.

"Boat outside/inside anchor boundary area" (where in Dutch now is shown: "Afstand referentiepositie Buiten gebiedsgrens [GUID]") is better, although personnally I would prefer to make it more general (e.g. "Boat inside [outside] boundary")".

Text in pop up (in Dutch) seems ok to me.

[jongough]

Hubert, et al,
In my mind, which must be strange, I see no conflict in OD, WD and WR.

OD is a drawing tool which has labels attached to each item describing its use and, to help, there are further distinctions or sub divisions of objects, i.e. Boundaries with no fill (Neither), interior fill (Exclusion) or exterior fill (Inclusion). These descriptions try to give a short, one or two word, description of the object. It is up to the user how they want to use these tools, some may want to use an interior filled boundary with light green shading to indicate it is a good place to be, others may want to use an interior filled boundary with dark red shading to indicate it is not a good place to be. I cannot guess how the users will prefer to use the tool.

OD only does drawing, BUT does allow other plugins to use an API (JSON messages) to ask questions about specific Lat/Lon points, i.e. is the Lat/Lon inside a specific or any boundary. OD will say 'Yes' or 'No', it has no knowledge of why the question was asked.

Now onto other plugins, WD & WR.

These plugins provide alarms and functionality to the user which is not in the main OCPN code. With the advent of OD there are new objects shown to the user which 'can' be used to provide 'helpful' information. These plugins can ask OD if a Lat/Lon is inside or outside any or a specific boundary. WD does this for the Boundary alarms, WR does this for every point in its 'fan' of possible route points.

I built this capability into both the plugins to show that it could be done and guessed at what may be useful. To help me, in my strange mind, I referred to OD objects by the way that OD does, i.e. Boundaries with types Inclusion, Exclusion and Neither, and further added recently to WD the capability to select the answer based on the state, i.e. Active and Inactive. All of this allowed me to look at the screen, see a boundary with shading outside, referred to in OD as an Inclusion Boundary, then select that boundary GUID and create, in WD, an Anchor Alarm such that my GPS position should stay within it. Also, I could have some Exclusion Boundaries with the shading on the inside and create, in WD, an alarm to let me know if I approach or enter one of these.

Now for me, in English, this all makes sense, however, it may not be so clear in other languages. I know there was an issue with plugins and OCPN using mixed catalogs of local translations, however, with a recent change I am hoping that WD and OD will now use translations specific to them. This does mean, however, that all strings for each plugin will have to be translated and placed in their respective 'po' file as there will be no 'borrowing' of other translations. So, if you want to change the wording in your language for any item in OD and WD you should be able to do this without impacting anything else. You can now choose to have the same labels or different ones in these two plugins.

A quick word about the graphics. In English Exclusion is the opposite to Inclusion, so I tried to do the opposite of Exclusion, Interior shading, with Inclusion, a small band of shading around the outside of the boundary. I reasoned that filling the screen with shading everything that was not in an Inclusion boundary would hide detail and be very confusing. Hence the difference in shading.

So, as most of the discussion has moved recently to wording of alarms and the usage of OD objects in other plugins I would like to assume that OD is now suitable to release for general usage. If there are OD related issues I will try and fix them up in the next day or so. If they are language/wording issues between the plugins then these can be fixed/changed in the po files and put up as minor changes.

Regards
Jon

Originally Posted by bcn

I would like to see a clear distinction between Odraw objects - which can be related to the movement of a boat (as EBL or DR, but even a point or an area might travel with the boat) or static - and the use of the drawn objects for other purposes or in other Plug-ins like Watchdog and (Automatic) Routing or Route checking.

In the latter usages the question of don't enter/don't leave (own boat or others) is getting interesting, but not in OD itself.

Hubert

[Gilletarom]

Congratulations JonGough,

We lack just two recent releases, downloadable, OD and WR to test changes in the language files.

And soon the last concluding arrive.

[jongough]

Gilletarom,
Here are my latest builds of WD and OD.

WD:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0l7szfkmrh...win32.exe?dl=0

OD:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1l5nt1kigk...win32.exe?dl=0

Regards
Jon

[rgleason]

I have hard time keeping up, but I think the pace will slow now. Jon I think your explanation is reasonable and it appears you have included tools for other language users. Thankyou for your patience and throughness.

[NAV]

Attached are the last versions of the Dutch language files for OCPN Draw and Watchdog.

[NAV]

Jon,
See attached picture. It seems not consequent to me that:
1. for the Boundary Anchor Alarm the GUID is shown and
2. For the AIS Guardzone the boundary name is shown.

Is it possible to show only the names (if there is no name, then show the GUID)?

Edit: Sorry, I intended to put this in the WD-thread.

[NAV]

Jon,

Also for OCPN Draw 2 new observations:

One string in the EBL properties window is not translated (when the windows opens, I see a Dutch text for a split second, than it becomes English). This string is "Boat", red under lined in attached picture.


The new warning text you added is not shown in translation.