[FOSS-GPS] FoxtrotGPS Mapping Library

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

John Stowers <john.stowers.lists at gmail.com> writes:
> 
> I was interested to see the announcement of foxtrotgps.
> 
> I am the author of the mapping library osm-gps-map
> ( http://nzjrs.github.com/osm-gps-map/) which I originally developed
> from the tangoGPS codebase when I forked it a few years ago
> (for many of the same reasons I suspect you did).
[...]
> I suspect you could recreate the whole of tangoGPS UI/app in less than a few
> thousand lines of C, or a few hundred of python. Additionally v0.5.0 is
> available in the lucid repositories.

John,

Thanks for letting us know about osm-gps-map.

At a glance, it looks like osm-gps-map did in fact retain a *huge*
portion of the functionality of tangoGPS--much of which it'd be
appropriate to call `core competency', and much of which does in fact
overlap overlaps with what foxtrotGPS does; and I wouldn't be
surprised if there are even similarities in *ways* that we're doing
things, right now (especially given our common lineage...). Though,
some things *did* certainly change (or get added) in tangoGPS between
when you forked-off and our 0.99.3 base, so I'll have to allocate some
time to give osm-gps-map a fair look.

There are some changes in the works for foxtrotGPS to open things up
architecturally, generalise some things, and probably integrate some
of the new newer features (like `friend'-tracking) with some of the
older features (like self-tracking); we've also been talking about
pursuing things like different autocentre modes, and smarter
tile-downloading strategies (like downloading all of the tiles along a
path). So, I'm curious about how those plans interact with the idea of
switching to osm-gps-map--how much stuff osm-gps-map would want to
manage itself, and basically to what extent the library is
parameterised.

Also at issue, of course, is that I'd rather not run the other direction
from what Marcus Bauer is doing in tangoGPS `just for the sake of it',
right now--there's enough higher-priority work right now that doing
a mapper-engine transplant might not likely be an immediate task anyway.

I'm planning on spending most of my free time this week doing
`reverse engineering' work on our GUI module to turn the autogenerated
C code back into an actual GladeXML file, but I'm going to try
to find some time between now and next week to look at the osm-gps-map
API and internals.

Thanks,

-rozzin.

-- 
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))."