Quote:
Originally Posted by bdbcat
4. There is no entry level documentation for opencpn, yet.
I formally renew the call for an experienced technical writer to step up and take a real, trackable swing at this. Any format will do, the content is what matters. I am not a writer, for me it is hard work, and the results are disappointing, to me at least. Any takers?
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Oops... part of the day job is writing tech users
manuals.
I am happy to contribute to this. I'd suggest the source material be written in rft format - its clean and can be imported into any DTP packages/ HTML editor etc without all the nasty word code.
One thought: There are a number of parallel threads now running,
AIS, Routing/Tracks, Chart editors, etc. Is it time to set up a dedicated site to
OpenCPN: I know there is a developer forum we use over at sourceForge, but Topsy is growing and might need to be moving into her own home. OpenCPN.org, OpenCPN.com and OpenCPN.net are all taken - registered via an
Amsterdam registrant. The .org is running a
blue water blog called Cruising Knots, but the .net and .com are parked. Whether the Dutch registrant can be persuaded to release the dot.org to us is debatable. : Is this site controlled by folks here?
I'm happy to donate server space and set the site up, including building the CMS back-office to allow online page editing - made enough of them, can't see any problem in making another for us.
But a dedicated site would be able to support the
documentation, a phpBB3 type forum for the different
AIS, Routing and Chart making threads. In the long term, a separate dedicated site will be good for the program. The developer forum on SourceForge will continue to coexist as its specialized and linked to the cvs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bdbcat
8. Finally, updatable CM93: Good idea. This could be done as an overlay, user switchable. Perhaps KML file format for input? Rhoel_Asia, are you there?
This sounds like an opportunity for third party collaboration...
Dave
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RA reporting in: Up for collab, though my C++ is rusty. Its how I started with WebGIS -
learning from the other programmers - my
current mapfile is a tad short of 5000 lines of data, built from a team members
core original template of just 75 lines. Amusingly, it actually works (though I have a nice collection of pink tiles I created along the way).
From my viewpoint, the suggestion of an overlay layer is best - it means if the base chart is updated, the data you created will remain intact. it may compliment, conflict or whatever: it won't disappear. And KML/GML seems the logical way forward.
At the moment, I am setting up the CVS on my Vista machine, and regretting it: I've spent 10 frustrating days trying to get all the elements up and running. I loaded Visual Studio only to discover it's misbehaving badly (like open file... crashes the program and if I'm really lucky, to blue screened the machine as well). My copy of Borland C++ uses an installed which Vista says is not a Win32 program (which it obviously is): I have watcom installed but when I tried to make the wxWidgets library, it bombed with a message
Code:
..\..\src\regex\regcustom.h(32): Error! E1055: Unable to open 'stdio.h'
..\..\src\regex\regcustom.h(33): Error! E1055: Unable to open 'stdlib.h'
..\..\src\regex\regcustom.h(34): Error! E1055: Unable to open 'ctype.h'
..\..\src\regex\regcustom.h(35): Error! E1055: Unable to open 'limits.h'
..\..\src\regex\regcustom.h(36): Error! E1055: Unable to open 'string.h'
..\..\include\wx/msw/gccpriv.h(41): Error! E1055: Unable to open 'w32api.h'
..\..\include\wx/debug.h(18): Error! E1055: Unable to open 'assert.h'
..\..\include\wx/debug.h(20): Error! E1055: Unable to open 'limits.h'
..\..\include\wx/wxchar.h(21): Error! E1055: Unable to open 'stdio.h'
..\..\include\wx/wxchar.h(60): Error! E1055: Unable to open 'stdarg.h'
etc
looks like path errors but I'll open this as a ticket on the sourceforge forum. We'll get there eventually.
Right now I am looking at how to reuse the nav icons from OpenCPN (why reinvent the
wheel and introduce new errors). They seem to be kept in a RLE file which I have no idea how they are constructed/opened for display. Once i have a handle on how it's constructed, I can list all the objects it contains, including
sae140 wind-farm request. Building xpm files is easy, it's what graph paper was invented for.
A questions arises on how people are obtaining their geo-positioning information. Feedback will be helpful: How do you know if things are in the right place.
The construction of the land, drying, sea layers seems of no major problem. Constructing lights is: Or more specifically, constructing segmented lights is an issue - unlike buoys and other fixed graphic point data, lights look like complex objects, constructed of active elements/layer components which describe the
arc and colour segments; Some lights (mainly lighthouses) have all-round white location sectors which are interrupted by red sectors guarding isolated rocks, and sometimes a green vector to mark a safe fairway. From memory, The Needles lighthouse (Isle of wight, UK) has such
safety vectors. Building a window which constructs this kind of light icon is going to be fun. I need to look at S-57 examples and reverse
engineer the data.
Dave, how do we progress on documentation/OpenChartmaker.
Rhoel