Confirm before un-starring tracks or pins

[mfloreen]

I just hiked one of Central Africa’s highest peaks, and used Pocket Earth to record my route. My goal was to record the time/altitude statistics, and be able to geotag my photos afterwards.

However, on the second morning, I was saddened to see that my track from the previous day’s hike was gone!

My guess is that along the way, while adding a waypoint or checking my progress, I accidentally pressed the star in the track recording panel. Then, when I closed the recording panel, it silently discarded the whole track. I believe the same thing can happen with pins too.

Any way to add a prompt to confirm that I really want to delete my track?

[BuckyE]

Dear mfloreen,

Oh gosh, that’s a great disappointment. (I lost several days worth of travel photos a few trips back, and am still angry with myself!)

I’m by no means the expert, because I’ve never recorded a Track! But you don’t mention actually Finishing your recording. The Help does say to tap the recording button a second time, while it’s red, to “stop” the recording. Is it possible this was not done, and PE timed out or your device was turned off, inadvertantly not saving the track? Just a thought!

Bucky ” An Amateur PE Friend” Edgett

[mfloreen]

Hey Bucky,

Thanks for the sympathy! 

I’m ashamed to say that I don’t think it was a technical fault at all, just good old user error. Here’s how I think it happened:

I did stop the recording, which saved just like it should. The completed track remained selected, and after we finished the first leg I actually checked a few of the stats to get an idea of the elapsed time and change in altitude.

At some point later in the day, my friend asked, “How far is it to Thuchila Hut?” I pulled out my phone, and popped into Pocket Earth. The previously recorded track was still selected, obscuring part of the map. With my mind entirely on answering my friend’s question, I jabbed at the “X” in the top right a couple times until it cleared, and started browsing for our destination.

My guess is that when I did that, I accidentally hit the green star, which is right next to the “X.” Then, I hit the “X,” discarding it forever.

I can’t remember if I was walking at the time, or maybe even climbing over rocks. Maybe there was a glare on my screen or my iPhone case got in the way. But ultimately, it’s my own dumb fault for hitting the star instead of the X. 

But I still hope the Geomagik team can help add a “Confirm Delete” to make it a little harder to make big mistakes like this…

Matt

[BuckyE]

Dear Matt,

Oh, I feel your pain! History is so easy to lose. (As an almost total aside, take a tip from an old timer, and as soon as possible, with the help of loyal companions, write it all down. Even if the document is lost [as so many do tend to be; I know from experienece] the act of writing will help consolidate the memory.)

In the mean time, I’m sure the PE developers have seen your request and will answer it it in due time. Please be aware they are currently in the throes of trying to polish a new v 1.7 to more or less coincide with the iOS 7 release. The new version promises to be slick as goose grease. A few of us have been beta testing and making all sorts of “make it do this and that” comments! So hang in with PE!

And as another aside, does your camera/phone not geotag its own photos? I would have thought everything did by now. But my last camera was a Minolta 570 35mm film job, so you can see how behind the curve I am!

Yours,
Bucky “The Antediluvian” Edgett
P.S. Yep, I see from your attachment the potential “go too fast” problem. I know your suggestion will be appreciated.

[mfloreen]

Bucky,

Thankfully, I had made a few notes in my journal with a few of the most important details. Writing those things down may be an antediluvian habit, but it’s one I’m just beginning to adopt.

My current camera doesn’t geotag photos, but not surprisingly, its newly-released successor does… 🙂

Between the helpful info and the goose grease, your post brightened my day. This forum has given me one more thing to like about using Pocket Earth. 🙂

Matt

[mfloreen]

Pocket Earth has improved in many ways since my original post! However, I’m sad to say I just had a similar experience as the one I wrote about 9 months ago.

This time around, I took my family to the incredible Nyika National Park, a 10 hour’s drive from where we live. I wanted to see exactly how much time we spent driving, so began recording one long track for the two day drive up and resuming it the two day drive back. I renamed all the waypoints of our stops along the way as reference points. I also liked the 

And about 700 km into it, the track disappeared. As best I can tell, here’s how it happened. We stopped at a hiking spot. I wanted to record a new track of my hike, so I hit “New Track.” I got a prompt saying, “This will stop the current recording track.” Yes, I want to stop the current track from recording, so I hit “Yes.” But what it actually meant was, “This will delete the current recording track…” 

My wife saw the look on my face as I realized the whole log was gone, and now she’s afraid to touch Pocket Earth in case she accidentally deletes something important too. So now I can’t ask her to help navigate when I’m driving anymore. 

I LOVE so many of the changes of Pocket Earth, and how it’s obvious that the developers are working hard to make things better. So I sincerely hope that my comments will help close up a little hole that has caused me two very great disappointments. 

Thanks!

[jsgblom]

I agree that it is to easy to unintentionally delete a pin, route or track or sometimes even an offline map.

The advantage of not being asked to confirm is when you hit it intentionally, which is most of the time. 

But the pain when hitting it unintentionally is a lot greater than the advantage I think.

When travelling there are moments when you are tired or distracted by the surroundings and then it is more likely for this to happen. 

And these are also the moments when it hurts the most, since it is difficult to get the pin/route/track/map back again when your offline.

– I hardly ever use the track recording option, but instead I use imported GPX tracks a lot. 

Loosing a GPX-track is also no fun. I know you can get these back from the Import section, but the average user does not know this.

– An offline map is not immediately tossed away when un-starring it, but still when hitting it unintentionally you might find out to late that you un-starred the map. 

– A calculated offline route is gone forever.

– A pin is also gone with the wind as soon as you hit the green star and select another item.

So a big vote from me on this one. 

(Or what about a trash bin where you can find the un-starred items, on top of the confirmation message?)

 

[GeoMagik]

@mfloreen:

Really sorry to hear this happened (again)!   We had planned to fix the accidental unstar delete issue in 2.0 but it didn’t make it in.  We have spec’d out the changes already and will implement them for 2.1 (in another month probably, we are still working on a high priority 2.0.2 hot-fix update first).

[Author]

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