OpenCPN Beta Version 4.6.2

[bdbcat]

bcn, and others...

Since I heard no further discussion, I assume scaling of the new MarkIcons for high-resolution displays (Dell XPS13) is OK?

Any other display problems noted for hi-res?

Thanks
Dave

[Moo]

Originally Posted by yachtvalhalla

And, as such, should be classified as Usericons and not garbage up the set of standard/default ones.

Drop a mark and try to find a suitable waypoint icon. Even more troublesome on a touchscreen.

Terry

I see your point Terry but I am in the camp that says lets see how it goes.

I think the colours will be particularly useful on satellite images and air photos. I like to make my own charts from satellite images (usually Landsat and Sentinel) and the universally recognised colour for marking up satellite images is yellow so in the past I have made up my own symbols in yellow but with a black border so that they show up on standard chart backgrounds too.

I think the new set will give great flexibility but your point on just having a few that are used in day to day navigation in a easy to access list would be great; square, circle, diamond, shoal, kelp, fish, overfalls; would be my top few but that would vary for everybody I guess.

[bcn]

Originally Posted by bdbcat

bcn, and others...

Since I heard no further discussion, I assume scaling of the new MarkIcons for high-resolution displays (Dell XPS13) is OK?

Any other display problems noted for hi-res?

Thanks
Dave

Dave...

perfectly sized for me on the Dell XPS13 with Win8.1

The macMini with 28"(2560 x 1440) is correct as well.


Hubert

[rgleason]

The size is better for me on a 15" laptop and will be better (because it is slightly larger) on the higher res MS Surface Pro 3.

[P_Dub]

Windows10 pro version 15in. things are all OK now.
Thanks for this version 4.6.2
Best of luck.

[yachtvalhalla]

[QUOTE=rgleason;2442678
I have never needed to do this, and I wonder what Terry uses it for, but perhaps charts and kap files need better adjustment and I never notice the problem, but he does.[/QUOTE]

cm93 OFFSETS:

The cm93 charting in SE Asia can be dangerously off in areas away from merchant shipping routes. A popular cruising destination, Palau, is an example and I have compiled the offsets necessary for all of the cm93 cells covering that location.

Other areas such as in the Philippines are poorly charted. In my 'tutorial' I use another popular Philippine destination, Puerto Galera, as an example. In this particular case it is evident that the cm93 charting was based on a Philippine chart using 'Manila' datum, and not WGS84.

Terry

[seandepagnier]

I started working on crowdsourcing cm93 offsets using the squiddio plugin... but never finished. Is it still worthwhile?

I found in the western hemisphere so far, no errors, but in many other places the cm93 offset can be large.

[reflectionsv37]

Originally Posted by bdbcat

Hello...

Thanks for all the good discussion on new MarkIcons. I hear all the points, I think.

As a potential improvement to the usability questions, I propose to implement the following:

1. Change the sort order of the Mark->Properties icon list such that the existing legacy (4.6.1) icons appear at the top of the list. These are the icons we all know and love from legacy OCPN, and include the defaults (triangle, diamond, etc) that are used for initial mark and waypoint creation. The new extended selection of MarkIcons will still appear, after the legacy group. And then the UserIcons (if any) will appear after that group

2. Allow one to manually delete icons from the list by removing the .svg file from the relevant directory after installation of OCPN. This does not quite work right now, but I will fix it so that it does. A user may then remove any icons they don't want hanging around, or move them to the UserIcons folder if they like.

After having looked at a lot of imported GPX files where the new icons always come in as boring circles, I think having a rich set of built-in icons that can be used for effective sharing of GPX files is a good thing.

Thanks
Dave

Hi Dave,

I think it would be a mistake to allow users to delete icons they don't like from the folder where OpenCPN stores the icons. That will defeat one of the primary objectives of the change, ensuring everyone has the same robust selection of icons. Making this change would actually make the situation worse. With this change, everyone could have there own non-standard set of icons and sharing GPX files would be even more unpredictable.

As I see it, the issue is the problem of finding an icon when you have nearly 300. Some people will only use a few, others may use many. I still think implementing some form of "favorite" for icons is the best solution to satisfy everyone.

I'm not sure how the logic of loading the waypoints works, but assuming there is a directory on each users system that you read from to load the files there might be a simple way to implement the favorites list as I've previously suggested. If the icons are stored in a folder on each persons device, when someone selects an Icon and marks it as a favorite, you could simply rename the file to include an underscore or some other special character that causes that file to be sorted at the top of the folder. You can hide the underscore when displaying the file name in the list and when associating an Icon with a waypoint. If the user later removes the mark for a favorite, you rename the file back to it's original name and next time the list is displayed, it's back in its original location. This would also preserve the current sorting scheme that keeps hazards, marks, services grouped together. The favorite group would be sorted in the same manner followed by the remaining icons.

Gene

[yachtvalhalla]

Originally Posted by boat_alexandra

I started working on crowdsourcing cm93 offsets using the squiddio plugin... but never finished. Is it still worthwhile?

I found in the western hemisphere so far, no errors, but in many other places the cm93 offset can be large.

No ... got rid of squiddio at least a year ago.

Yes ... in my part of the world cm93 can put you on a reef or shoal. But that's another subject called 'seamanship'.

Terry

[rgleason]

Originally Posted by bdbcat

Hello...

Thanks for all the good discussion on new MarkIcons. I hear all the points, I think.

As a potential improvement to the usability questions, I propose to implement the following:

1. Change the sort order of the Mark->Properties icon list such that the existing legacy (4.6.1) icons appear at the top of the list. These are the icons we all know and love from legacy OCPN, and include the defaults (triangle, diamond, etc) that are used for initial mark and waypoint creation. The new extended selection of MarkIcons will still appear, after the legacy group. And then the UserIcons (if any) will appear after that group

2. Allow one to manually delete icons from the list by removing the .svg file from the relevant directory after installation of OCPN. This does not quite work right now, but I will fix it so that it does. A user may then remove any icons they don't want hanging around, or move them to the UserIcons folder if they like.

After having looked at a lot of imported GPX files where the new icons always come in as boring circles, I think having a rich set of built-in icons that can be used for effective sharing of GPX files is a good thing.

Thanks
Dave

I like these ideas.

What about "Hide" an Icon?
- What does "Hide" mean? That it is not seen in the list, but if there is an instance already, or an instance of the icon in an imported gpx that it will show properly.

What about a "Find" or text search?

[rgleason]

Chuck is still having problems. I've tried to help and he has apparently cleaned off his machine completely and reinstalled and it is still happening.
FS#2214 - TIDE Current velocity pop up and tide state fuctions cause fatal error

I've run out of ideas. Chuck has certainly been attentive and responsive.

Originally Posted by transmitterdan

Ask him to disable all plugins that do not come with the default O installation. He has some plugins running that I don't know about. After disabling the plugins then close and restart OpenCPN.

Also, a log file might reveal something. Can we get one from his machine.

[SoggyPaws]

Originally Posted by yachtvalhalla

Noticed but not reported in 4.6.1 and still the case in 4.6.2 is a problem with entering cm93 offsets. The program will hang while trying to enter offsets.

Perhaps other can try it and comment.

Thanks,

Terry

Actually, it was me who asked Terry to report this. I've just come back from Eastern Indonesia where the CM93 chart is fairly accurate in most places, but the placement of the charts are up to a mile off!

To correct Terry's report, OpenCPN does NOT "hang", it just looks like it does.
When you click "Save" (or OK) on the offset box (and you have to have changed something, not just open the box and click save" You get the spinning "wait" cursor forever, but the program is still working. So it is probably a very simple fix "return cursor to normal after saving the update to the CM93 offset". The program still works after making the update, it just has the cursor spinning. The only thing that corrects this is to shut down and restart.

Thanks guys, for all your work...

Sherry s/v Soggy Paws
Currently in the Philippines

[SoggyPaws]

Hi all,

I like the new expanded mark definitions, but concur that it would be nice to have a simple way to "favorite" the marks I use all the time so they are at the top of the list. (Or near the triangle which is is the default icon when you drop a mark). Or, maybe just a checkbox "Enable Extended Marks", so people who don't like change, don't have to change until they see a reason to. 98% of the time, the marks I'm dropping are Anchorages, Scuba spots, or notes marked with a red x.

Legacy Marks: I just noticed that the new set of icons have changed the name of a few mark icons (for example, xmred to XRed), and there is now no icon associated with xmred. I use that little red x all the time to denote a note on the chart. (though the expanded mark types would help by providing marks that denote what I'm remarking on). Just wondering if it was necessary to remove xmred and rename it Xred?

I hope you have some scheme for leaving ALL the legacy mark type names defined... it would be a mess to upgrade and find mark types that used to be defined now undefined.

Sherry

[reflectionsv37]

I'm in full support of a Favorite list and sent Dave a updated possible solution on how to implement it this morning. It basically lets you mark an Icon in the pull down list as a favorite, either by marking a checkbox or right-clicking to select or deselect it.

The next time you bring up the list, Favorites will list first(including favorites selected from UserIcons if present), then the Standard list of icons and finally UserIcons if any. A check box or a star in the list would indicate which were selected as Favorites.

Legacy Icons - I don't see a reason to continue to use the legacy Icons and definitely don't want to see them at the top of the list. With the exception of 2 Legacy Light Icons, we have a new Icon for each of the legacy Icons and I've asked Weits to create those so we will have a complete list.

I understand that no one wants to go back and change all their Icons to new names. I think a cross reference list should be used by Opencpn and anywhere a legacy icon name is referenced in a waypoint, the program should automatically maps it to the new icon. The change would be transparent.

I agree with Sherry that we should have as minimal impact on existing users as possible. The method I proposed to Dave would allow the update program to determine if the update being applied was the first time the user upgraded to a release that includes the new Icons. If it is the first installation that uses the new icons, the icons that represent the old legacy icons, could be marked as favorites so they will appear at the top of the list. They only noticeable difference is that they would appear in a slightly different order based on the new file naming conventions. Once installed, those icons can be unmarked as favorites and the user can set up their own favorites. This would also have the benefit of providing an example of how to use the favorites selection.

We're almost there!!!

Gene

[rgleason]

What about "Hide" an Icon? (Eyeball)
What does "Hide" mean? That it is not seen in the list, but if there is an instance already, or an instance of the icon in an imported gpx that it will show properly.
What about a "Find" or text search?


I heard no response to these ideas, did anyone see them?

PS: I suppose Favorite is a version of Hide but not quite.

There seems to be a lot of programming associated with this because of Legacy Icons, you guys are going to have to make this simpler to execute without too much fancy programming. Think of bdbcat!

What about a simple full, one time replacement? One for one. Maybe with a question to the User, do you want to replace icons with new ones? Then figure out how to make it easy to go back for those who don't like it.