[BuckyE]

Dear nounours,

Thank you very much for your thoughtful response. I think you’re beginning to see–and telling me where I’m wrong!–my overall idea for what I’d call the My Map System.

“If there is only one search result, and then another, it does not work. “
Of course. That would violate the concept of Stickiness.

“the current maplayers are nothing else then as a predefined search result (e.g. the “accomodation” layer is just the search “hotel or hostel or apartement or …”)”
Yes! Yes, yes, yes. Except that, the Map Layers as they exist have no sub-categories. I’ll elaborate as we go on, but, just as an example, there has never been, and I’m sure there will, in my use of PE, never be, a time when I want to see all the POIs for the Map Layer “Driving.”

In Search, I can display/Find Fuel Stations, Parking, Car Wash, Car Rental, etc. etc. When I’m using my map, I might want to see one of those Sub-categories. Just in this random example I might want to see at the most two: Fuel Stations and Parking. On the map I’m currently viewing.

Please remember that I’m using PE as a traveler. If I’m an American in the wilds of rural France, I want to see what fuel stations might be somewhere “nearish” me at the moment; whether I need to take a highway to get to one; if there’s a reasonably straight-line route available. By looking at the map. I want to have the visible, zoomable map continue to show me Fuel Stations as I zoom it.

“Search does not have a zoom layer in yet – if I search for restaurants, I want to see them. With map layers, every item has also a zoom level where it will start (or stop) to show.”
Yes, and I hate that. If, in another example, I’m interested in pizza joints, and see on my map that’s there’s a block over there that has so many pizza joints on it that the icons are covering each other, that’s information. I want to see that riot of icons: it immediately say: “Pizza joints here!” If I zoom out, to look at an area few blocks or even miles larger, why would I want the pizza joint icons to disappear? Maybe I’ll see an even bigger cluster; maybe I’ll se a place by the river side, and decide “Hey, riverside, I’ll take my chances there.” This business of showing and disappearing at zoom levels makes no sense to me.

It’s purely and only a clumsy developer solution to the perceived –not actual– problem of having too many POIs show up/overlap/obscure each other because, as implemented now, Map Layers are too crude/inclusive/not finely divisible enough to truly customize My Map. I think Sticky Searches would solve the problem in one fell swoop. Except that,,,

“And a search is (currently) limited in radius, where as map layers are not. I think there might be a performenc issue behind this …”
Well, that may be. I’m not by any means the expert here. I kind of think that, if PE is able to perform with every (current) Map Layer enabled, then there shouldn’t be a problem with turning “ultimately fined grained map layers/POIs/Pins” on and off as I want them to be. That’s all I want: control over what shows at the moment I’m viewing a map. At any zoom level. Whether it makes icons mush together or not.

<hr />

I think there’s a basic disconnect between my idea and the developers’ idea of how a digital map should work/display. The concept of “map layers” arises from infrastructure. In the days of printed maps, maps showed roads, town names, rivers with labels, etc. It wasn’t possible to show and label every restaurant, hair salon, etc. That was partly because the map would be too cluttered, and partly because the finer-grained information changed too often.

Of course, if I bought a Series Blue or Ordinance Survey 1:2,500 scale map, yes, I would (I still will!) see individual buildings, historical markers, Roman bridges, etc, etc. But I won’t see businesses, because the map makers know in a year or two the maps will be outdated. OK, fine. So, historically, there has been a division between “infrastucture/permanent stuff” and ephemeral stuff. Sadly, PE is still trying to follow this paradigm.

In PE, Map Layers are trying to show “infrastructure/permanent stuff”: roads, administrative boundaries, traffic lights, bridges, trails, etc. But Map Layers are also mistakenly showing/hiding ephemera: Food and Drink, Accommodation, etc.

[BuckyE]

Dear nounours,

You raise an interesting question! But, if you don’t mind my saying so to a long time pal like you, who makes me think, I kind of feel the original question of stickiness is being lost. And stickiness is wrapped up with Layers and Search. And, because you make me think, and because I appreciate that, I’m going to try to Reply to both your original request for Transport Stickiness and your latest post, all in one. With the basic proposition being that I don’t think it’s fair, or useful, or, it would be confusing, to make one certain Category (e.g. a Transport Layer) sticky, while others are not.

Map Layers are necessary, and different than searching.
Well, sorry, not in practical terms, no.

Map Layers is how the map looks. Search is for looking for something specific.
These two things are the same. “How the map looks” is the same as saying “These are the specific things this current map shows.” Obviously, every map can show or not show a thousand, a million categories of stuff. PE doesn’t currently show topo lines, or shaded relief. It does (because of the OSM data) a really terrible job of naming watercourses. It doesn’t have text labels for mountain ranges. It doesn’t do a very good job of labeling administrative sub-boundaries. When it zooms out, it loses town names that I would like to still be able to see. I could go on and on, but these examples will, I hope, prove my point: every “look” of a map shows “something(s) (that are) specific. Towns, river names, etc., etc.

I do not want to see everything.
Of course not, you want to see what you want to see, at the moment you are viewing the map. And that desire will change every time you look at the map. From one view to the next, you might always want to see traffic lights. One time out of 10 you might want to see POIs for restaurants. I always want to see watercourse names. You want one thing; I want another; some times you want A, sometimes you want B. Sometimes you want A, B and C. Sometimes you want A & C. etc.

If I see everything, the map gets unreadable.
Of course. A map with the capabilities of PE is almost infinite.

If I see all the buslines in a city, nothing else will be visible anymore.
Well, now, my drinking friend–and I’m hoisting one in your honor as I type–given that buslines follow city streets, what you would see is the streets in color(s). I certainly agree, if your map was showing every existing POI, and thousands of Pins, then the map becomes chaos. But that’s just an argument for a convenient way to pick and choose what to see. As in, “Search.”

If you show all the lines, nobody will understand anymore where the bus stops.
Not if, as currently, there are little gray circles for the stops.

That’s why the public transporters are making schematic drawings, not maps.
Not at all. When Harry Beck designed his London Tube “map” in 1931, the intent was to show the connections between lines. In other words, to show how the Tube worked. He very deliberately divorced the diagram from a map. From Wikipedia: “He believed that passengers riding the Underground were not too bothered about geographical accuracy, and were more interested in how to get from one station to another and where to change trains.” (In my view, a hideous and useless mistake. But I’m an old curmudgeon!) In his diagram, nobody who didn’t already know where the stops are were could possibly see the stops as they existed “on the ground.” This might be fine for people who live in a city, but for tourists it’s worse than useless: it purports to show a map, without giving them (me, us) any idea where the d*mn stations are in any kind of relation to where we are, or want to go.

The current tourist handout Maps/Diagrams for the New York subway are a hybrid. Look at http://web.mta.info/maps/submap.html. Granted, the underlying map is diagrammatic, it is not a perfect UTM projection of Manhattan. But still, there is a rudimentary map under the subway (tube/metro/underground) routes.

Why?
I’m sitting in a restaurant, getting drunk, and start to wonder how far the next bus station is – I do not want to fiddle with my map settings. They are normally constant. (yes, better several name set of preferences, but that’s another story …).
I agree entirely. If I want the POIs for transport to be visible, they should be visible when I want them to be. But that is not an argument for Permanent Map Layers. That is merely an argument for Search Categories to be easily made visible (and perhaps, stick), until easily dismissed/turned off.

And, if you want to see Bus Stops and Lines, why not, when a particular POI for a Bus Stop is tapped, show all the lines? How often does it occur that you can be sitting in the Hofbräuhaus, see that there is a Bus Stop around the corner, and have that one Bus Line take you directly to your hotel? Lucky you if that’s the case! (Myself, I’d be looking for taxi stands!) So, if you have Enabled Transport > Bus Lines in a previous Search, and they stay Enabled (until you Disable them) and you tap the stop around the corner from your watering hole, why not have all the lines show up? With the relevant markers showing connections?

Apparently, you don’t think this way. There are some others that do like you (there was a post recently), but I think most people are very much in line with the concept of map layers (OsmAnd e.g. on Android is just the same …).
I’m also very, very much in favor of “layers/categories” of information being definable. The more fine-grained the better. But the point under discussion is Stickiness. So, if Bus Lines are going to be sticky, shouldn’t Restaurants be sticky? My wife and friends and I are sitting at the café, deciding where to go for supper. I tap one restaurant, it looks interesting, but see another a block away. I tap the second one…Ahem. Does the first one stick? Or not? That way lies map developer madness.

Unless, of course, all Layers/Categories are sticky. But then what happens to the Info Window? Does it list all currently tapped items? That might not be bad. A h*ll of a new paradigm, though.

In short, I’d say it’s easier and more convenient to eliminate Map Layers in the Settings Menu, to make Search sticky, with the option to deliberately disable/Hide a previous Search result. I think something like that is coming up!

Your friend, Bucky Edgett

[BuckyE]

Dear nounours,

As stated many, many times, my solution to “stickiness” is very simply to make Transport Subcategories Map Layers that can be enabled/disabled. So that they are on, or not.

And really, Map Layers should be eliminated and rolled into the Search function, but no one wants to hear me go over that again!

So, my idea is that “bus lines stoping at THIS stop, and bus lines stopping at this stop AREA.” should be irrelevant: give me a way to show all the bus lines; with icons for connecting stops, etc. on my current map. I can then scroll, tap, do whatever I want with impunity, including tapping bus stops for schedules or whatever other Info can be shown for them.

When I’m finished figuring out my route, I can Hide/Disable Transport > Bus Lines. Easy!

Yours,
Bucky

[BuckyE]

Sorry, can’t say for a phone. But, on my iPad 2 (that good ol’ thing) I have had PE open for about seven to eight hours several times. About half that time, the iPad was asleep (lunch time, local museum visit, etc.) but not turned off. About a third of the time, we were using the GPS function in PE to navigate.

I turn off/disable the GPS in PE when, for instance, we can see we’re going to be walking along a trail for fifteen minutes without any need for the GPS.

One other app (PDF Expert) was running the whole time, for consulting PDF docs of notes, a guidebook, etc.

In all these cases, I began at 100% charge and ended with at least ten percent.

All wireless functions were turned off in settings. We were offline! Pretty much no need to be online with PE and a guidebook or two.

[BuckyE]

Dear jsgblom,

Holy Moses! I never even knew all this! Can’t thank you enough. How do you folks find out all this stuff about PE? Neato!

Coincidentally, this Track is the only one I saved that had a Profile. See below. So, now I have to see some Tracks that have a relatively level course, for comparison, because I’m not familiar with reading Profiles. I’m familiar with looking at topo lines and shaded relief to get a general idea of the amount of up&down. This one looks like there’s a lot of up&down, and I know there was, but “reading” a Profile in detail will take some experience!

Ah, I see my problem with these “cumulative” numbers as a gauge of the difficulty of the hike. They are cumulative for what I’ll call “overall elevation.” They don’t tell me how many actual feet of elevation we walked up, or down. Hah! Even when the overall trend may be down, there are still a lot of up spikes on this track. And vice versa. Interesting! So, in general, the numbers are a start, but the Profile is the secret.

There are some oddities in this Track: the graph seems to begin and end at 1,000 feet, not 666. Because it’s supposed to be a circuit hike (beginning and ending at the same place), it should have no Alt Change at all; but I don’t know who recorded it or how. So I don’t think this is a good example for study, but it’s the one I have, and I see the principle.

Now I have to mygpsfiles.com a couple of Tracks, and compare Profiles. Thank you so much for all your help!

Yours truly,
Bucky

[BuckyE]

OK, I think I understand some of the confusion I’ve been having.

A. v2.1.1

B. Have downloaded Japan.

C. Show Regions of Japan in the sidebar menu.

D. Tap a star to Save a city.

E. A dialog Box asks me if I want to “Download” approx 20 mb of data. If I click Download, 2 seconds later my city is green Starred.

There’s no way my ISP is going to send me 20mb in 2 seconds, it would be more like 6 minutes. So the Dialog Box is not recognizing that I have the data. Perhaps something similar is/was going on with the Download Maps progress bar? I don’t seem to be seeing that so much now (after v2.1.1?)

[BuckyE]

Dear Tobias,

Thanks for bringing this up. I also want to see all the interconnections. That’s so necessary for really being able to use Public Transport.

I’d also like to be able to see all the lines there are at once, to get an overall view of what’s available!

Yours,
Bucky

[BuckyE]

Dear GeoM,

Sorry to have been away so long. Was in southern France using the heck out of PE and loving it!

Thanks for your suggestion. The number prefixes come from a whole other info system I have developed for trip research, and reflect categories set up in PDF documents. In some PE Groups, I have many dozens of these, so dragging would be…laborious.

So, anything you could do would be appreciated, but it’s not a big deal, a minor inconvenience and doesn’t need, by me, to be put at the top of any list. Thanks for considering.

Yours,
Bucky

[BuckyE]

Dear Kritou,

I’m not the expert and may be replying with information that is irrelevant to your question, but, http://pocketearth.com/forums/topic/construct-a-rhumb-line-track/ might give you some insights?

Yours,
Bucky

[BuckyE]

Thank you! I’ve been looking at the My Maps side menu and realizing that I can use its functions to “update=redownload” individual maps. (Yes, the general alert does give me the size of types of data but that wasn’t my immediate concern.) So actually all is cool and froody.

I have a whole bunch of maps I like to keep for research and trip planning purposes! And now I see that I can “update=replace” each one individually.

It might be an idea to work on a new, more informative Alert that would bundle in a Tip telling me I can use the side Menu to “update” my maps individually. But that’s a concern for the future.

[BuckyE]

Dear reck,

I’m just a PE user; there may well be a better method! Perhaps someone else will chime in with advice.

Having worked with computers since about 1989, I’m kind of old fashioned. I connect my iPad in order to back it up all the time! I don’t trust these machines!

So along those lines, I’d recommend using the Settings menu to save your PINs&Favorites to an iTunes or a GPX file (both accessed through iTunes) every so often. Can’t hurt and may come in handy. Data can get corrupt, and PE being one of the few apps we use in which we actually manipulate data, it very occasionally does happen. Handy to be able to replace with a clean backup if that happens.

[BuckyE]

I use iTunes. If I open iTunes, and go to the Apps tab/button, I see a section down at the bottom that lists the apps that can accept files. I click on Pocket Earth in the list of apps that can accept files, and then either drag a file to its list, or use the Add button to browse to a file.

When my iPad is USB cabled to my computer, iTunes, pushes the file to PE, and it then appears in a list of importable files in PE.

Maybe there’s a better way, but that’s how I do it!

[BuckyE]

I’m very sorry! Obviously not paying enough attention to the forum. Can’t thank you enough!

Now have about 18 jillion Nearbys and Searching is working a treat.

[BuckyE]

Dear Xomtor,

I will try that interesting test. Just at the moment, I continue to get “Downloading Maps” notices when I View a newly starred Destination/My Map, or sometimes right after I Star a sub-item.

As you say, this doesn’t seem to happen when I use gestures to zoom and pan the map.

But why am I getting these downloads? Weird!

[BuckyE]

I am not crashing (v2.0.1, iOS 7 iPad) but I am definitely not getting all data downloaded for a country. Just last night/this morning I dl’ed Japan.

1. Now I am Starring/caching Kyoto, and get a message “Would you like to download all maps (<1 MB) for Kyoto for offline use?” Tapping Download results in a one-second flash of the Download Bar. Not nearly enough time to download a megabyte on my connection.

2. Tapping View gives me a zoomed-out view of the area. When I zoom in a level, the Download Bar flashes again, saying Downloading Maps. This time, about two seconds for the progress bar to zip across.

Having upgraded to v2, of course I’ve had to re-download all my countries. My system has been to download whole countries, then to Star a few regions and/or cities within the countries.

3. Pretty much every city Starred/Cached has exhibited the behavior noted in (2.) I guess it doesn’t matter, but it’s confusing. And makes me wonder if indeed my country has been fully downloaded. What other data may be missing for cities or downs I don’t Star>View>Zoom>Download, and how would I check or know?

Something odd is happening! Thanks.

[BuckyE]

Yes, yes, yes, please!

Please make the Long Hold pop up a menu with:
Add to Map
Remove from Map
Replace on Map
(Remove all)

[BuckyE]

Thanks, Ozgeo. Geomagik did say “We will be moving over to OSM data for this in the future which will be
more comprehensive and have better multi-lingual and country specific
support.” So we’ll see what happens!

[BuckyE]

Dear Olivier,

Interesting! Thanks for adding to the discussion.

BUT when we travel and for leisure activities we usually use “régions”
(ex: “I visited my family in Brittany last summer”). I also think most
travel guides are organised primarily by “régions” both to simplify
access and because they have a stronger cultural identity.

OK, that’s interesting. Yes, probably most guides are organized by something like regions. But the Guide Regions don’t always correspond exactly to the official regions!

As Pocket Earth is about travelling, I would recommend keeping “régions”
as the first subcategory. Adding a second subcategory with
“départements” would be a nice touch, but I don’t see it as a priority.

Well, I’m using PE for traveling. But as a user, I’d like to see PE be as successful as possible, and limiting its scope or usefulness to the concerns of travelers is perhaps not the grandest vision possible! PE could be useful to all kinds of people doing things/gathering or generating information “out in the field,” so to speak. I don’t know, archaeologists, or somebody. Although perhaps specialists have specialized software!

Anyhow, I’m a sometime database developer&user, and my experience is the more ways there are to collect and organize information the better. So long as “the ways” are reasonably easy to understand and use, and the lesser ones don’t interfere with the more common. Hah!

Along those lines, I’m collecting information from a lot of web sites: Les Plus Beau Villages de France, RandoGPS.net, the Megalithic Portal, etc. All the web sites I visit map and list by départements. I assume this limits the length of lists, makes map sections smaller and easier to see, etc. It would be handy to be able to use PE to show map areas that correspond to the Lists!

Thanks for listening!

[BuckyE]

Dear Ozgeo,

Sorry to have been away so long!

In the current iteration of PE, you can go to Favorites (star icon on the map), and tap the “My Groups” icon on the bottom right of the drop down window. Tap & hold any item in the My Groups list, and a pop-up menu will appear at the bottom of the window. Tapping “View on Map” will Show all the Pins & POIs that have been added to that Group and the map will zoom to a view that shows them all, and the Info Window will appear, telling you what Group you are Showing.

For better or worse, as it stands, all other Pins/POIs will be hidden. But, if the Info Window is closed by tapping the “X” icon, the Map will stay at the same zoom, and all other Pins&POIs will appear.

It may not be ideal, but it’s useful!

[BuckyE]

Excellent! My workaround worked. Now I know what to do.

[Author]

Posts