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Wow, what a quick response. Good to hear OSM has useful stuff.
For me, all I want is a Map. Just like the standard subway/metro/tube maps that get handed out in every city. Except the routes and stops would be superimposed on the PE map so that I could see what stops/stations/etc. were nearby, and what lines connected to what.
The route lines on the map would be simple connect-the-dots between stations. They would be colored to match the official city-produced diagram/map. The connections would be shown with the fairly standard circles.
Interactive highlighting would be cool, but I’d prefer to see a map layer overlay for the entire system first. With such, it would be easy enough to work out one’s own route just as we do with a printed or PDF map. Interactive highlighting of a single route doesn’t sound, on the face of it, very useful. It’s often, perhaps usually, necessary to make transfers to get from Here to There, and I’d like to see the possibilities all at once!
I’m wondering how exactly this works between PE and OSM. I’m looking at OSM’s categorizing system. It’s massively detailed. Was there some reason PE decided not to just replicate it?
Is it possible, in the iOS, to construct the Settings > Map Layers with show/hide subcategories taken from OSM?
That’s the way I would have done it!
The new icon is a definite improvement. I’d make a few small changes.
1. More blue; it’s too overall green. With everything more or less a similar color, there’s no real point of interest: nothing stands out to catch the eye.
2. Type on straight lines, not curved. The curved baseline, especially the only slightly curved EARTH, is a bit too cute. This is a heavy-duty, massively competent app. The logo should emphasize its competence, not its niceness!
3. “POCKET” running over the top 1/10 of the globe illustration. Give the text this little bit of 3D effect, to make it stand out and catch the eye.
Holding breath, trembling, yearning…
Let us know if we can speed things up by making a monetary contribution; and if so, how.
Wow! Wow, wow wow! Incredible.
One other question, please? Is there a limit to the amount of text we can put in the Notes?
Oh, oh oh! What great news. I knew I could trust PocketEarth, the best map app on the planet!
Any word on an Organizing Functions for Pins, Destinations and Routes? We’re going abroad in March, and such functions would sure be handy!
Thank you very much for your reply. This indeed explains the PocketEarth behavior. As far as Fastest Routes goes, it’s great! I’m confident you’ll give us more options and make PocketEarth even better.
Thank you very, very much for your patient response to my impolite frustration. I’ve been experimenting a bit more, and have seen a behavior of the CloudMade routing that explains much of my frustrations…
The CloudMade service is adamant about using the “largest” or most major (or whatever the term would be) roads it can find. There doesn’t seem to be any way to convince it to use “shortest distance” routes.
Most of the time this is probably great. But I’m hoping to use PocketEarth for travel in places where we’ll be mostly on “back roads.” Places where we’ll not have a data connection, which is why the offline functionalities are so important and totally wonderful.
So, when I try to use the CloudMade routing and it insists on finding the “most major roads” route, AND I then drag a Control Point to a small road that would provide a much more direct route, the routing continues to insist on adding kinks and backtracking and weird zigzags to try and adapt my new Control Point to whatever larger roads are in the area.
I’ve found that adjusting the placement of the Control Point helps some, and adding more points eventually straightens out the back-roads route I’m trying to create. But this is rather cumbersome.
Perhaps I’m missing some possible function of the current routing software? Is it possible to choose Types of Routes, as on most GPS devices like TomToms or Garmins? My limited experience with those is that they have “avoid traffic” and “shortest distance” and “fastest time” and “avoid tolls” settings. That’s probably my basic problem: I want “shortest distance,” and the CloudMade is insisting on “biggest roads” (or something along those lines).
This whole routing business is unacceptable. The engine doesn’t understand back roads or direct routes at all. Modifying routes is cumbersome, arcane and inefficient. Good maps, terrible, unusable routing.
Oh, yes, I’m enjoying PocketEarth very much. If topographic maps could possibly be done, please don’t worry about “differential compression”! Topographic maps! Shaded relief! Yes, yes yes!
I can see that given my ISP and data caps –which are terrible, worse than anyone else’s– I may want to rethink my methods. Perhaps a less frequent update, or perhaps just not trying to keep so many large, country-wide maps on my iPad.
Thank you very much for your continued and patient help.
OK, all worked as hoped. The initial Required Data Update took about three seconds. Then, the grind began.
Every single one of my Saved Destinations was marked with a yellow star. PocketEarth automatically began redownloading them at 2:20 a.m. local time. At 7:30 (a half hour after my free download period ended) PE was still downloading the last yellow-starred map, France, and I had to cancel that. I had 16% of my download allowance remaining for the day; the 70% of France remaining would have caused me to be penalized for exceeding my data cap. Whew!
So, although it works as expected, I’m going to have to rethink my use of the app. Obviously I cannot have all the Destinations saved I would like to, vector data or not!
I might not be able to Update tonight, but certainly in a day or so. In the meantime, here’s another point to consider. I cannot remember exactly what was happening during the Update when I canceled it. I note that in your post you mention “canceled an in-progress Destinations download.”
Might there be a difference/small bug in PocketEarth Update behavior depending on what was being downloaded when I cancelled? Remember that in my case, I definitely cancelled, but then later restarted and supposedly finished. Yet Destinations were not completely updated by the restarted Update. This gets complicated, but to completely test you would have to try different types of interruptions/cancellations…
1. Have some saved Destinations, of course, with complete data for all scales/levels.
2. Have an Update that includes data for both the Destinations and other maps.
3. Cancel the Update during a time when Destinations are being Updated, then restart it.
4. Check Destinations.
5. Cancel the Update during a time when something other than Destinations are being Updated, then restart it.
6. Check Destinations.
7. Compare results of (4) and (6).Just a thought!
I can’t thank you enough for your continued help and your perfect and detailed explanations. This is incredibly thoughtful service for such an inexpensive App! Wonderful!
It’s almost certain that I “canceled an in-progress Destinations download” because of my realization that the Update would exceed my data cap.
However, I later restarted the Update during my free download period, and it completed “successfully” according to the App. I use the scare-quotes because of course, in my case, the Update did not “successfully” re-download my Saved for Offline Use Destinations.
1. I’m not sure/can’t definitely remember the sequence of events, but I’d say…
1a. I purchased an earlier version.
1b. I downloaded and saved Destinations.
1c. I upgraded to v1.3.
1d. I Updated Map Data with the results we’ve been discussing.
However, I also canceled the 1d Update.I will certainly Update again tonight (tomorrow morning) and take some notes on what happens. See next post!
Thanks for considering these points. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask a question to try to clarify and understand exactly what was happening! Because, I hope to be able to use PocketEarth entirely offline while traveling in places where I will not have a data connection!
1. I had many maps fully downloaded, including Wikipedia articles, etc. and saved for offline use.
2. One of these maps –and I am using this strictly as an example– was for the state of Maryland, USA.
3. The map data update occured.
4. After the update, Maryland was no longer Saved For Offline Use. I had to redownload it all over again, apparently from scratch, as if I had never downloaded it.Is it correct to assume the map data used by PE comes in two “levels:” Broadrange and Local (my terms, of course)? Because it seems to me that the update installed new Broadrange data for Maryland, but did not include the Local level (or the Guides).
If something along these lines is the case, this seems to me to be not the best system. But I may have done something to stop or block a complete replacement of both levels of data during the update.
On the other hand, if it is normal behavior to replace a Saved For Offline map with only Broadrange data, it would be nice to know that was happening. Thanks again for your help.
Well, I’m looking forward to the Organizing Function for a future version. I have faith!
Thank you so much for your help. I’ve been looking deeper into my copy of Pocket Earth and KIND OF figuring this out! But it’s still confusing, and very much counter-intuitive.
I was not “relying on” the automatic downloads that happen when I zoom in on a particualr location. Quite the opposite! I thought and expected that I had Maryland (State, USA) as one of my many Favorite Destinations. When the Map Data Update occurred, I then had no –I will say, not knowing the correct terminology for Pocket Earth– local/street level map data for Maryland. “Maryland” was definitely NOT “redownloaded automatically.”
Which for me, with my terrible limited data restrictions from my ISP, was probably a good thing in the interim! But still, it did not happen automatically.
I have seen, just in the last half-hour or so, before I came back to this forum, that several of my Favorite Destinations are no longer “Saved for offline use” according to the My Destinations list/screen/window/palette. (All of them are states in the United States.) I see that I can use the little blue arrow icons to re-download these Destinations, and I’m doing that now, during my Free Download Period, so that I do not exceed my data cap.
So this whole system has confused me, but I now see how to work it. In closing, I’ll say that I would have appreciated a notice being given by the app that some of my offline data was going to be erased/replaced, and some instructions as to how to fix that!
Thanks for your help!
