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-   -   [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=82196)

earthwings 2012-02-08 19:42

[Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 

It's my pleasure to introduce Marble (the virtual globe and world atlas you know from your desktop system or your N900) in its Harmattan version for the N9/N950, available for installation from the Ovi Store.

The user interface has been rewritten completely based on the Qt Quick / Qt Components with the goal to simplify the interaction while still keeping all important features. An immediate change existing Marble users will notice is the introduction of a new startup screen where you choose an activity: Routing, Navigation, Virtual Globe and many more; each aligning the user interface in a way convenient for the task at hand.

In contrast to other Marble versions we will ship updates more frequently and introduce new features also in minor versions.

Marble 1.3.2
The following activities are integrated:
  • Virtual Globe - Different views (map themes) of the globe
  • Search - Find cities, addresses, points of interest
  • Routing - Calculate the way between arbitrary targets
  • Tracking - Record your way
  • Navigation - Turn-by-turn instructions while you travel (textual and voice guidance)
  • Weather - Temperature and weather situation of many places
  • Friends - Shows people from the OpenDesktop community
  • Space View - Views of different planets and the moon

http://nienhueser.de/marble/touch/ma...-landscape.png

http://nienhueser.de/marble/touch/ma...navigation.png

http://nienhueser.de/marble/touch/ma...uch-search.png

http://nienhueser.de/marble/touch/ma...ouch-atlas.png

http://nienhueser.de/marble/touch/ma...satellites.png

http://nienhueser.de/marble/touch/ma...ouch-venus.png

http://nienhueser.de/marble/touch/ma...-landscape.png

http://nienhueser.de/marble/touch/ma...fline-data.png

http://nienhueser.de/marble/touch/ma...h-speakers.png

http://nienhueser.de/marble/touch/ma...-mapthemes.png

Let me highlight a couple of features which I like best personally:
  • Four different routing backends are queried at the same time: Yours, OpenRouteService, MapQuest and Monav (offline routing, see below)
  • Offline routing is possible when installing Monav Routing Daemon from the ovi store and downloading offline data for it in Marble's Preferences page
  • Switch between motorcar, bike and pedestrian routing with a single click
  • Voice navigation speakers for many languages can be installed directly from within Marble; just select the one you like in the Preferenes page
  • We provide many additional map themes; install the ones you like in the Preferences page
  • The search function queries nominatim (from OpenStreetMap), but also works offline when you install data for the region you're interested in (in the Preferences page again)
  • View realtime clouds, realistic day/night zones, and accurate satellite positions in the space view activity

Feedback is highly welcome! Please report bugs to KDE Bugzilla. Short-term planned changes are listed in KDE Techbase. Posting in this thread works great as well.

Roadmap
  • Marble 1.3.1: 2012-02-02 (available in Ovi Store). First release
  • Marble 1.3.2: 2012-02-08 (submitted to Ovi Store). Pinch zoom, MapQuest routing backend, download tiles along the route, more voice navigation commands
  • Marble 1.3.x: Bookmark support

Further Reading

daniel_m 2012-02-08 20:37

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by earthwings (Post 1162343)
In contrast to other Marble versions we will ship updates more frequently and introduce new features also in minor versions.

Wooohooo, does "other versions" include Fremantle?
Don't make me break out in tears, please! :cool:

earthwings 2012-02-08 20:59

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
No, the fremantle version has the "conservative" policy still for two reasons:
  • The code is taken from the same branch as the desktop version, where KDE policies apply (no new features in stable branches)
  • The fremantle version includes translations, which must not be changed in between minor versions per KDE policy
I could resolve the first one by packaging the Fremantle version from the same branch as the Harmattan one, but the second reason would still apply.

That also means that once we introduce translations (user interface in other versions than english) to the Harmattan version, we cannot introduce new features as easily anymore. That should happen for version 1.4.

We're not the only KDE application facing this problem; I hope that policies change now that mobile applications become more and more popular (which are usually updated more often).

impact 2012-02-08 21:00

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
I noticed there is another app from you in the store, the monav routing daemon. Do I need to download that, too?

DarkSkies 2012-02-08 21:39

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
This is the most excellent development. Much appreciated!

aRTee 2012-02-08 23:15

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Hi earthwings,

thanks a million, it's really a fantastic application.

I have a few comments and questions.

From the screenshots it looks like the openstreetmap hiking and cycling maps have to be installed, but in the downloadable routing maps for some regions, I noticed there are car maps only, whereas other regions have car/cycle/pedestrian maps.
Am I correct to assume that:
- for routing, one needs the downloadable map data with the right symbol (i.e. with a car only, the Swiss map data will not allow routing for pedestrians/cyclists)
- the map type (osm, cycle, hike and bike, etc) has influence only on the visible maps / downloaded tiles
?
If so, how/where does one get pedestrian maps of Switzerland (perhaps just main cities, OSM is not all that good outside major places) and Cycle maps of the Netherlands?

Next question: is the elevation data downloaded once for the area one is looking at? If I want elevation data for all of Switzerland, how can I do that? Or is that a bad idea?


On the Virtual Globe, I can change the setting to OSM, to be able to zoom more (default view Atlas won't allow to zoom much), but each time I go out and come back in, it's back to Atlas - any way to make OSM map view permanent?


The offline data list is very long (which is great) and slow to scroll, it would be good if there would be a way to scroll through it faster, or have a nested way to get to the right point (continents/subcontinents, then countries (then regions/cities).


If I search for something, and get multiple hits, the red markers that appear don't go away anymore.
They sometimes shift to the wrong place when for instance going to routing view then back to virtual globe...
When touched, a popup with the found name shows up, and the word route. I can't seem to make that go away just by tapping next to it.

Even when setting offline mode, I get the request for internet connection a lot...


Even with the bugs that I encountered, I would say that this the most impressive, coolest app for the N9.

What is missing is vector map drawing; I hope that gap can soon be filled.
Also, the openbusmap data would be cool.

Anyway, thanks again and keep up the good work!




BTW
@impact, you need MoNav for offline routing.


PS As an engineer who sometimes takes things too literally, I figured I'm not the only one when I saw the satellites view... seems like a conversation like this went on:
Dev A: I think we should offer a satellite view (thinking of satellite footage..)
Dev B: I'll get right on it!
/jk :D

aRTee 2012-02-08 23:49

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Just played a bit with the weather section - it flickers the station info in portrait mode, in landscape all is fine, and wow, it's really cool!

earthwings 2012-02-09 22:54

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1162443)
From the screenshots it looks like the openstreetmap hiking and cycling maps have to be installed, but in the downloadable routing maps for some regions, I noticed there are car maps only, whereas other regions have car/cycle/pedestrian maps.
Am I correct to assume that:
- for routing, one needs the downloadable map data with the right symbol (i.e. with a car only, the Swiss map data will not allow routing for pedestrians/cyclists)
- the map type (osm, cycle, hike and bike, etc) has influence only on the visible maps / downloaded tiles

The map theme is indeed just a visual representation independent of the routing functionality. You can switch between different map themes without affecting routing at all.
The offline data to download for certain regions is needed only for offline routing. Marble queries several routing backends in parallel; as long as there is an internet connection, routing will work in any region (assuming the servers reply). If you want to calculate routes offline, you need to install an offline map for that region. You also need to install Monav Routing Daemon from the Ovi Store in that case.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1162443)
If so, how/where does one get pedestrian maps of Switzerland (perhaps just main cities, OSM is not all that good outside major places) and Cycle maps of the Netherlands?

Currently pedestrian and bike offline route data is only available for Germany for direct install in Marble. If you have an Internet connection, calculating pedestrian routes in Switzerland and cycle routes in Netherland work directly (OpenRouteService delivers them in 1.3.1 and in 1.3.2 additionally MapQuest). If you're interested in offline routing for those regions, you have to convert the data yourself at the moment. This is not too complicated, but so far we don't have a tutorial on it. In short, you need to install the monav-preprocessor (easiest on a Linux desktop system), download a osm.pbf file for the regions you're interested in (e.g. From download.geofabrik.de), preprocess it with monav-preprocessor and create a marble.kml file (use an existing one as a base). Then copy that to the N9 (place it in /home/user/MyDocs/.local/share/marble/maps/monav/).

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1162443)
Next question: is the elevation data downloaded once for the area one is looking at? If I want elevation data for all of Switzerland, how can I do that? Or is that a bad idea?

Marble downloads the elevation data automatically in the background and caches it locally. When you create a couple of routes across Switzerland, you'll have all the needed data and from there on it will work offline as well.
The data is downloaded from http://files.kde.org/marble/maps/earth/srtm2/ You can download all that to have the elevation data for the whole world, but I'd not recommend it since it is large (more than 15 GB IIRC).

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1162443)
On the Virtual Globe, I can change the setting to OSM, to be able to zoom more (default view Atlas won't allow to zoom much), but each time I go out and come back in, it's back to Atlas - any way to make OSM map view permanent?

The intention of the Virtual Globe activity is more to use it at a distant view. For higher zoom level I'd suggest using e.g. the tracking activity, since it uses the street map theme you configured and also the mercartor projection, which is better suited for OpenStreetMap derived maps (faster and sharp zoom levels).

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1162443)
The offline data list is very long (which is great) and slow to scroll, it would be good if there would be a way to scroll through it faster, or have a nested way to get to the right point (continents/subcontinents, then countries (then regions/cities).

I want to fix the slowness and allow collapsing the sections in one of the next releases. There's also a bug report for it at bugs.kde.org.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1162443)
If I search for something, and get multiple hits, the red markers that appear don't go away anymore.
They sometimes shift to the wrong place when for instancet going to routing view then back to virtual globe...
When touched, a popup with the found name shows up, and the word route. I can't seem to make that go away just by tapping next to it.

Clearing the search result (cross icon in the search field) should remove the markers. You can get rid of the popup by clicking on the popup (except the route button of course). Maybe I find a way to close them when clicking anywhere else as well.
There's a bug report about the search markers appearing at the wrong place when the virtual keyboard is open. Is that what you see maybe as well?

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1162443)
Even when setting offline mode, I get the request for internet connection a lot...

That should only happen in the preferences dialog, but nowhere else. Can you elaborate when it happens (which activity?)

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1162443)
Even with the bugs that I encountered, I would say that this the most impressive, coolest app for the N9.

What is missing is vector map drawing; I hope that gap can soon be filled.

Yes, on top of our todo list... We had a GSOC project on that topic in 2011 and will likely start another one this year to get it ready for end-users. You can see the current state at http://edu.kde.org/marble/current.php

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1162443)
Also, the openbusmap data would be cool.

Can you file a bug at http://bugs.kde.org please so I don't forget about it? Thanks :-)

Vaterix 2012-02-10 19:10

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Excellent app and thank you for making it possible, can I just ask about some things I noticed.

1. Can I use it completely offline for navigating or simply browsing the map for street names and house numbers?

What I did: Downloaded the daemon from the store, installed the map for my country, set up "offline" in preferences, but I still see a pixelated image/map of my city/country and it gets worse with zooming. Once I go online, it starts downloading everything on all zoom levels, i.e. I scrolled through my city on all zoom levels to get the map more or less visible/scrollable while in offline mode, is there another way to do that which I missed? :)

2. Would it be possible to have a search by house numbers?
3. Would it be possible to have say garmin or navitel maps converted to be used with Marble? I have bought them while I was rocking my 5800 and they're very detailed (not that openstreetmap isn't, but paid maps are constantly updated etc.)
Thank you!

aRTee 2012-02-10 20:42

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Vaterix (Post 1163253)
Excellent app and thank you for making it possible, can I just ask about some things I noticed.

1. Can I use it completely offline for navigating or simply browsing the map for street names and house numbers?

I ran into the same thing, and in fact the offline data contains enough information to do routing/navigation, but there is no engine to actually use that data to make the drawing of the map...
In an initial step, there will be the feature to download tiles along the route:
Quote:

Originally Posted by earthwings
Marble 1.3.2: 2012-02-08 (submitted to Ovi Store). Pinch zoom, MapQuest routing backend, download tiles along the route, more voice navigation commands

and after that - understandably, since it's a lot more work, map drawing based on the vector data used for routing:
Quote:

Originally Posted by earthwings
Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee
What is missing is vector map drawing; I hope that gap can soon be filled.

Yes, on top of our todo list... We had a GSOC project on that topic in 2011 and will likely start another one this year to get it ready for end-users. You can see the current state at http://edu.kde.org/marble/current.php

Once vector based maps are a reality, it will be easier to support features like:
- rotate map according to compass
- rotate map according to heading
additionally to the current
- north at the top of the display
and also 3D view...


Quote:

Originally Posted by Vaterix (Post 1163253)
2. Would it be possible to have a search by house numbers?
3. Would it be possible to have say garmin or navitel maps converted to be used with Marble? I have bought them while I was rocking my 5800 and they're very detailed (not that openstreetmap isn't, but paid maps are constantly updated etc.)
Thank you!

Searching by house numbers is possible, as long as the house numbers are properly entered into www.openstreetmap.org - which is a noble task to perform for housenumbers you know of that you may want to search for...
In general, the house number situation in openstreetmap is not very good where I live, the quality of the data depends on the region and naturally what people put into the system.
This is however not something that Marble as an app can do something about...

On point 3, it probably depends on what the data format is if it's at all doable, but if doable, it will also depend on developer willingness to work on such a feature.
BTW Paid maps are perhaps constantly updated, but openstreetmap is constantly updated as well; a few weeks ago, I figured that on the N9 I'd be stuck with Nokia Ovi (Navteq) maps, so I fixed a couple of things there - that have been right on OSM for ages...
And here in Zurich there's a new tram line that's not on Navteq at all, but it's there on OSM and OBM (bus).

aRTee 2012-02-10 21:24

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Hi earthwings, thanks a lot for your complete answers!
BTW apologies for my attempt to answer questions that were directed at you, please correct my comments as required - I just wouldn't want to keep you from coding. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by earthwings (Post 1162876)
Currently pedestrian and bike offline route data is only available for Germany for direct install in Marble. If you have an Internet connection, calculating pedestrian routes in Switzerland and cycle routes in Netherland work directly (OpenRouteService delivers them in 1.3.1 and in 1.3.2 additionally MapQuest). If you're interested in offline routing for those regions, you have to convert the data yourself at the moment. This is not too complicated, but so far we don't have a tutorial on it. In short, you need to install the monav-preprocessor (easiest on a Linux desktop system), download a osm.pbf file for the regions you're interested in (e.g. From download.geofabrik.de), preprocess it with monav-preprocessor and create a marble.kml file (use an existing one as a base). Then copy that to the N9 (place it in /home/user/MyDocs/.local/share/marble/maps/monav/).

Ok, I'll have a look if I can manage. Got the Linux system, no problem there. If I have trouble, I'll post back here, if not, I'll see if I can write a bit more tutorial alike text.

Quote:

Originally Posted by earthwings (Post 1162876)
Clearing the search result (cross icon in the search field) should remove the markers. You can get rid of the popup by clicking on the popup (except the route button of course). Maybe I find a way to close them when clicking anywhere else as well.
There's a bug report about the search markers appearing at the wrong place when the virtual keyboard is open. Is that what you see maybe as well?

No, I was just switching between different views (don't recall, probably between search, route and navigate..), and zooming in and out.
BTW thanks for the info on how to get rid of things; all logical on second thought - and I figured some out today, except for the popup where one has to click on it, but not on the route button...
I think that's not so intuitive to have to click the popup, but just around the button... on a resistive screen like the N900 or my old N700 that would be fine, but capacitive touch needs more leeway IMHO...


Quote:

Originally Posted by earthwings (Post 1162876)
Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee
Even when setting offline mode, I get the request for internet connection a lot...

That should only happen in the preferences dialog, but nowhere else. Can you elaborate when it happens (which activity?)

Well, I think it was about everytime I passed by the general overview, not sure now, and today I used a sim card with data, so just kept data on. I'll try again and will let you know if it's not related to the preference dialog.


Quote:

Originally Posted by earthwings (Post 1162876)
Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee
Also, the openbusmap data would be cool.

Can you file a bug at http://bugs.kde.org please so I don't forget about it? Thanks :-)

Done: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=293804



Some more questions and comments:
- the show satellite option on the space view seems to show a lot more than just geolocation sats (think I saw good ole Astra on the list, etc), and I guess that data comes from the web.
If there's no data connection, will it show the GPS sats that the system has ephemeris data for (as soon as it has data, even before a fix)?
That would be much much cooler than the regular spiderweb view, especially if some kind of colour change would indicate the sat reception strength and whether it's momentarily in use for GPS positioning...!

- when moving in space view with show sats to venus or so, the sats are happily flying around venus... I guess when changing away from Earth, the show sats and clouds should be off...

- when setting up a route, one can edit a point as per the "current location", or "select in map" (btw I think it should be 'select on map' but I'm not a native speaker...). I figured out that the various views from the general menu are all very linked, so one can choose 'select on map', then go back to the general menu, then into Search, then find a street/place with the search function, then click one of the search results (which shifts the map to that point), then choose the appearing route button, or just go back to the Route section, where the previous map is then in view, and touch a place on the map to be used.
I think alongside the Select on map and Current location, it would be good to have a third option Search, which would have one jump directly to the search section, and after seaching, when going back, have the view come back directly to the Route view...

- if one installs maps of adjoining regions, say Germany, Switzerland and Italy, can Marble / Monad then route all across?
(I once asked Navit devs this question about Navit, which can't do route across different maps...)
From how things are set up, I'm guessing it should be ok also with offline routing data, but it would be good to have confirmation...

- I was navigating earlier today, and when turning on the height profile, then turning it off again, the white position/directional arrow disappeared, as well as the signal precision red halo.
Going out and coming back (also doing a route from current location) brought things back...

- is there any place from where I can download current / latest versions other than Ovi Store? Perhaps it's good if some people test the waters..?

Paul Ortyl 2012-02-12 09:11

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Hi,

How can I specify where map data is stored/cached?

At the moment it is hardcoded on MyDocs vfat partition, it means, that I cannot use symlinks to specify, where the data should land. I would like to use the same cache shared between many applications.

TIA

Paul

YavkatA 2012-02-12 10:32

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Hi,

Great work!! I have a small feature request:
Can you include the option to download tiles for the visible region for a range of zoom levels, like on the n900?

http://userbase.kde.org/images.userb...RegionZoom.png

Paul Ortyl 2012-02-12 18:27

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Another bug...

The routing daemon does not quit when marble quits. As a result you cannot use N9 as a USB mass storage device, because the routing daemon is using data from ~/MyDocs and therefore the vfat partition cannot be unmounted in order to switch to the mass storage mode when USB connected.

Solution 1: kill routing daemon when marble quits
Soultion 2: (additionally to #1) let the user decide where the routing and map cache data is stored. Use directory in ~/.local/share/marble/.... and make soft link to ~/MyDocs/.local/share/marble/...

Paul

aRTee 2012-02-13 20:12

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
@Paul
what if you stop routing first, then quit marble?
I mean, until the bug is fixed, with your proposal Solution 1, that is...

BTW the solution 2 you propose is not very acceptable, since the ~/.local data is on a relatively small partition, not one where the user will be happy to have 100s of MB of map data...


Another point/feature request: for routing, if one drags the route, there will be a new waypoint inserted and the route will pass along that new point - as soon as there are 3 points, it would be good if each of those could be deleted individually; now if one clicks the edit pen symbol, one gets the choice for select on map and current location, it would be good to get an additional option: delete point.

earthwings 2012-02-13 22:42

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1163302)
Hi earthwings, thanks a lot for your complete answers!
BTW apologies for my attempt to answer questions that were directed at you, please correct my comments as required - I just wouldn't want to keep you from coding. :)

No, your answers are appreciated ;-)

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1163302)
BTW thanks for the info on how to get rid of things; all logical on second thought - and I figured some out today, except for the popup where one has to click on it, but not on the route button...
I think that's not so intuitive to have to click the popup, but just around the button... on a resistive screen like the N900 or my old N700 that would be fine, but capacitive touch needs more leeway IMHO...

I changed it to close on the next click now. Currently that also closes it when panning, I hope I can fix that until the next release.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1163302)
Some more questions and comments:
- the show satellite option on the space view seems to show a lot more than just geolocation sats (think I saw good ole Astra on the list, etc), and I guess that data comes from the web.

It shows "100 (or so) brightest" from http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/
Marble's Desktop version let's you configure further which satellites are visible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1163302)
If there's no data connection, will it show the GPS sats that the system has ephemeris data for (as soon as it has data, even before a fix)?
That would be much much cooler than the regular spiderweb view, especially if some kind of colour change would indicate the sat reception strength and whether it's momentarily in use for GPS positioning...!

That's a cool idea. Can you file a bug report (wishlist)? Would also be nice to have that for the Desktop version.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1163302)
- when moving in space view with show sats to venus or so, the sats are happily flying around venus... I guess when changing away from Earth, the show sats and clouds should be off...

That should be fixed in 1.3.2 already. If not, in 1.3.3, the version on my N950 already has the fix at least.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1163302)
- when setting up a route, one can edit a point as per the "current location", or "select in map" (btw I think it should be 'select on map' but I'm not a native speaker...). I figured out that the various views from the general menu are all very linked, so one can choose 'select on map', then go back to the general menu, then into Search, then find a street/place with the search function, then click one of the search results (which shifts the map to that point), then choose the appearing route button, or just go back to the Route section, where the previous map is then in view, and touch a place on the map to be used.
I think alongside the Select on map and Current location, it would be good to have a third option Search, which would have one jump directly to the search section, and after seaching, when going back, have the view come back directly to the Route view...

Yes, indeed. I couldn't decide how to implement it nicely so far.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1163302)
- if one installs maps of adjoining regions, say Germany, Switzerland and Italy, can Marble / Monad then route all across?
(I once asked Navit devs this question about Navit, which can't do route across different maps...)
From how things are set up, I'm guessing it should be ok also with offline routing data, but it would be good to have confirmation...

Monav can't handle that currently unfortunately. You'll either need larger maps or route to the borders.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1163302)
- I was navigating earlier today, and when turning on the height profile, then turning it off again, the white position/directional arrow disappeared, as well as the signal precision red halo.
Going out and coming back (also doing a route from current location) brought things back...

Thanks for reporting, I know what's wrong and added it to the todo list.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1163302)
- is there any place from where I can download current / latest versions other than Ovi Store? Perhaps it's good if some people test the waters..?

Yes, here. Currently it's building an intermediate version 1.3.2.1 with initial, incomplete bookmark support. Feel free to test, but note that this gets updated with very little testing, so there'll be more bugs than in the version in the Ovi store.

To use it, open a root terminal on the N9/N950 (devel-su, password rootme on the N950) and create the file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/marble-experimental.list with the content (one line)
Code:

deb http://repo.pub.meego.com/home:/shentey/MeeGo_1.2_Harmattan_Maemo.org_MeeGo_1.2_Harmattan_standard/ ./
Save and run
Code:

apt-get update
apt-get install marble

If the version from the Ovi store is installed, you need to remove it first via
Code:

apt-get remove marble
because otherwise it will refuse to install the package from the "untrusted" location.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul Ortyl (Post 1163814)
How can I specify where map data is stored/cached?

At the moment it is hardcoded on MyDocs vfat partition, it means, that I cannot use symlinks to specify, where the data should land. I would like to use the same cache shared between many applications.

It's possible to change the .dgml file associated with a map theme in /opt/marble/share/... to cache the data in an absolute directory of your choice. That's how we use a shared "OpenStreetMap I" directory on the N900 (via a post-install hook in the packages).
Is there some similar common directory on the N9 used by several applications?

Quote:

Originally Posted by YavkatA (Post 1163833)
Can you include the option to download tiles for the visible region for a range of zoom levels, like on the n900?

I left it out for 1.3.2 to think a bit more on the user interface. The best solution I have in mind so far is to integrate it in the "Prepare offline usage" dialog in the Routing activity (so you can either download along the route or the currently visible region). The drawback is that people might expect it elsewhere as well (I'd expect to download tiles along the route only in the routing activity, but downloading tiles for the visible region would suit in other activities as well).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul Ortyl (Post 1164073)
The routing daemon does not quit when marble quits. As a result you cannot use N9 as a USB mass storage device, because the routing daemon is using data from ~/MyDocs and therefore the vfat partition cannot be unmounted in order to switch to the mass storage mode when USB connected.

Solution 1: kill routing daemon when marble quits
Soultion 2: (additionally to #1) let the user decide where the routing and map cache data is stored. Use directory in ~/.local/share/marble/.... and make soft link to ~/MyDocs/.local/share/marble/...

Marble already implements Solution 1, the routing daemon is terminated when Marble quits and that works reliably on my phone. I know of a bug that can lead to Marble not quitting correctly, but sitting idle in the background waiting infinitely for some network connection that failed. It might be related to that. Are you using a N9 or N950? Which software version?

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1164595)
Another point/feature request: for routing, if one drags the route, there will be a new waypoint inserted and the route will pass along that new point - as soon as there are 3 points, it would be good if each of those could be deleted individually; now if one clicks the edit pen symbol, one gets the choice for select on map and current location, it would be good to get an additional option: delete point.

So far I deactivated that feature because it triggers a crash; I think it's a bug in QML as it's easy to reproduce (a MouseArea in a ListView delegate that triggers its own deletion leads to a crash). I didn't find a sane fix so far.

YavkatA 2012-02-13 23:38

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by earthwings (Post 1164672)
I left it out for 1.3.2 to think a bit more on the user interface. The best solution I have in mind so far is to integrate it in the "Prepare offline usage" dialog in the Routing activity (so you can either download along the route or the currently visible region). The drawback is that people might expect it elsewhere as well (I'd expect to download tiles along the route only in the routing activity, but downloading tiles for the visible region would suit in other activities as well).

The first place I looked for this option was in Offline Data, under Data Management in the Preferences dialog. I think that this might be a good place to offer this option, because, as you say, people might expect to see it elsewhere and not only in Routing.

aRTee 2012-02-14 15:24

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Thanks again earthwings for all your efforts!

Quote:

Originally Posted by earthwings
Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee
If there's no data connection, will it show the GPS sats that the system has ephemeris data for (as soon as it has data, even before a fix)?
That would be much much cooler than the regular spiderweb view, especially if some kind of colour change would indicate the sat reception strength and whether it's momentarily in use for GPS positioning...!

That's a cool idea. Can you file a bug report (wishlist)? Would also be nice to have that for the Desktop version.

Done: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=294076


I got the preview version installed, no problem. Pinch zooming etc is ok now, thanks. Didn't have much time to try out other things, hope to have more time tonight...


Another thing I noticed is that the elevation profile starts at 0 (y-axis scale); living and moving around in Switzerland / Zurich area this makes it hard to distinguish altitude variation nicely,...
For cycling / jogging, up and down by 50 m is quite a bit, but if the base is around 400m, 50 m delta is hardly a blip...
Since 0m is also a relatively arbitrary level, I would say the y-scale should fit to the range. That would also make it easier to read the min and max elevation of a track.

aRTee 2012-02-17 09:59

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Something else: the satellites are shown in a very unrealistic way: much to close to the earths surface.
http://www.kowoma.de/en/gps/orbits.htm shows the GPS altitude, and geosynchronous orbits (such as for Astra) are shown nicely here: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclo...ary_orbit.html and on wikipedia.

But then again, I'm not sure what kind of realism is desirable/doable.
I also don't know for which satellites (of the top100) altitude data is actually available.

Edit: see this page with real view:
http://science.nasa.gov/realtime/jtr...JTrack3D.html/

tackat 2012-02-20 09:55

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1166148)
Something else: the satellites are shown in a very unrealistic way: much to close to the earths surface.

The positions provided in Marble are realistic and correct:
Actually the top 100 satellites/spacecrafts _are_ "close" to the earth's surface: Take the ISS for example which orbits at a height of 380 kms above earth (which equals about 3% of the earth's diameter) . Same for the HST which travels at a height of about 550km around our shiny blue Marble.
Many of the bright satellites are just orbiting closely to the atmosphere which is just a very thin layer on top of the earth's surface.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1166148)
http://www.kowoma.de/en/gps/orbits.htm shows the GPS altitude, and geosynchronous orbits (such as for Astra) are shown nicely here: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclo...ary_orbit.html and on wikipedia.

For the geostationary orbit (like GPS satellites) the situation is different indeed. However those are not enabled in Marble by default. If you enable them (this might only be possible easily in the desktop version) you'll see that the GPS satellites are indeed rendered by Marble just like in the pictures you show: at a height of about 35800 km.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRTee (Post 1166148)
But then again, I'm not sure what kind of realism is desirable/doable. I also don't know for which satellites (of the top100) altitude data is actually available.

We verified the positions and altitudes for a few satellites (we had this verified even by people who do this satellite stuff professionally) and so far up to our knowledge the positions are correct (except for the rare case of very elliptic satellite orbits where there is a slight minor difference to the actual position). If you still think that you have found some bug regarding the position of a certain satellite please tell us the name of the satellite and the time for which you tested and we will check.

aRTee 2012-02-20 10:08

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Well, I mentioned I saw Astra, and as it's a sat tv satellite, it is in geosynchronous orbit. But then again, I may be mistaken about seeing Astra... perhaps I just misread the name label.

Ok, good to know that the altitude is correct already (didn't realise you guys were so thorough); and indeed, it makes sense that the 100 most visible (man-made, i.e. not the moon) satellites are quite close to the earth. I guess those make a round trip in an hour or even less, and will be the ones most interesting to see in Marble, as they actually move quite visibly.
I clearly recall lying on the beach in the south of France many years ago and seeing a satellite move, and wondering what it was. Won't have that problem now anymore :-)

Anyway, I still think it would be good to have the GPS sats also show up, even if they are not visible, perhaps with a different setting, just to have the overview...

YavkatA 2012-03-04 00:25

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Any updates? :)

earthwings 2012-04-15 15:46

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
I've been travelling a lot recently and didn't find much time to work on new features / bugfixes. I hope to finish the next release this month though with support for bookmarks, OSRM as another routing backend, offline data management usability improvements and various minor fixes.

YavkatA 2012-04-15 16:08

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Thank you for the update. Looking forward to it:)

KTy 2012-04-16 10:12

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Great work, it is nicely polished.

Is it possible to expect transit (bus/subway/pedestrian) routing ?

christianko 2012-04-19 08:22

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Thanks for bringing marble to the n9.

Two questions though:

1.) Is voice navigation for bycicles supposed to work? For me it does not: The only sounds i get is: You have reached your destination and something like you left the route.


2.) In routing, how is it possible to remove a via point (like B,C,D) other than clearing all of them.

Thanks!

earthwings 2012-04-22 17:23

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
@KTy: So far I didn't find a suitable routing backend for transit routing. Mapquest (included in Marble already) claims to support transit routing, but I wasn't able to calculate a route with it yet. Possibly it works in quite limited regions only so far.
There's some work by Google and others to have cities contribute their schedules in a standardized way. It still has a long way to go, but may become a good choice at some future point.

@christianko: Currently three of our routing backends support bicycle routes: OpenRouteService, MapQuest and Monav. When OpenRouteService was used, the behavior you describe might occur because in Marble 1.3.2 we don't extract the turn type from OpenRouteService yet. That will change with 1.3.3. You can tell whether turn directions have been extracted by looking at the turn instruction list below the route via points: The icons on the left must be arrows / roundabout indicators, not "i" icons.
The other ones should work fine with voice navigation. Notice that for Monav you need to install 1) Monav Routing Daemon from the Ovi store (free) and also 2) one or more suitable bike maps (see Offline Data in Preferences) for the region you're travelling in.

@all: I expect Marble 1.3.3 to be released at the end of the month and hit the Ovi store few days later. Here's a quick list of the new features:
  • Support for bookmarks
  • Filtering in offline data management
  • Support for OSRM (Open Source Routing Machine) as another routing backend
  • Download (caching) of map tiles of the currently visible area

A more elaborated changelog alongside more screenshots can be found in this post.

If you feel brave, give the fresh build 1.3.2.2 a try. Thanks to all testers :)

http://nienhueser.de/marble/touch/01...rk-details.png

KTy 2012-04-23 09:59

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Thanks, looks very nice !
In my city (Singapore) google offers such service... Unfortunatly no application on the N9 is using it :(

earthwings 2012-05-02 22:31

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
@KTy: From my experience Google's terms of usage restrict the usage of their services to websites and disallow important things like turn-by-turn navigation.

@all:
I created a new version 1.3.2.3 which could eventually become 1.3.3. One last thing I've been working on this evening is some polishing for the initial screen, where still some icons are missing. Unfortunately there's a lack of activity within KDE's icon creators and I miss the required designer skills, so I'm searching for a different icon set. I tried some icons from thenounproject.com, resulting in this (left old, right new): http://nienhueser.de/marble/touch/icons-comparison.png

It's not total crap, but nothing to ship either. How do you like those icons, are they self-explaining? Any designers around to polish things up? The white rectangle gradient looks rather silly still and having a 3D colored background object against a monochrome foreground doesn't feel absolutely right to me as well.

YavkatA 2012-05-03 03:03

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
2 Attachment(s)
Once again, thank you for your great work! The new icons don't look all bad, but if you want to try something new, I can suggest that you look at the Faenza Icon Theme on GNOME-Look. I have chosen some icons from that theme that might be suitable replacements.

earthwings 2012-05-04 07:11

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
@YavkatA: Thanks for the icon set. Like the oxygen one used currently in Marble it's a desktop icon theme that lacks proper icons for routing, tracking and navigation (because the desktop icon themes miss proper categories for those). I'll go for the ones from thenounproject.com now which aren't perfect either, but imho depict the categories better. It looks like this now: http://nienhueser.de/marble/touch/ma...dark-icons.png

@all: Version 1.3.3 is submitted to the Ovi store and should show up in the next days (pending successful QA review).

[Update 2012-05-09: QA passed, should appear in the store very soon.]

YuriyVidineev 2012-10-13 13:17

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Thank you for excellent program!
Will Marble 1.4.x be available for Nokia N9?

ezameht 2012-11-10 20:50

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by YuriyVidineev (Post 1280052)
Thank you for excellent program!
Will Marble 1.4.x be available for Nokia N9?

+1. An update for this superb application would be great.

sondjata 2012-11-18 15:38

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Soooo does it automatically reroute like NAVIT?

MaKenZi 2012-11-30 01:49

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
any news about new update?

zaidk9 2013-05-28 13:50

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
where's the offline data saved??

zaidk9 2013-06-05 09:11

Plzzz someone help me
Wheres the offline data saved??
Plzzz help

zaidk9 2013-06-05 09:48

Plzzz help me i have lost 400mb in app data plzzzzzz
=(

Wikiwide 2013-06-05 14:10

Re: [Announce] Marble - "Find Your Way and Explore the World" on Harmattan
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by zaidk9 (Post 1347425)
where's the offline data saved??

Where are the map tiles stored to be used offline? Probably, in directory ~/.local/share/marble/maps/earth
A discussion
Best wishes.

knobtviker 2013-06-06 08:07

I am amazed by this app. I'd like to see it ported to BB10 as their Maps are poor in data at the moment.
A must have, truly...


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