[FOSS-GPS] FoxtrotGPS 0.99.4 available (also: looking forward...)

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

Hello all,

I'm pleased to announce the release of FoxtrotGPS 0.99.4,
now available for download from <http://www.foxtrotgps.org/>.
Please download it, build it, package it, use it, hack on it--
enjoy it!


Marcus, if you're listening: we've made a number of improvements that
I'm sure the users of tangoGPS would appreciate you incorporating--
the most salient ones are listed in the attached NEWS file.

As far as I understand the goals of tangoGPS, the vast majority of
improvements that have been made thus far in FoxtrotGPS should also be
a fit for tangoGPS; even features like zoom-decoupling/detail-scaling,
perhaps--since the GUI has been completely recreated in GladeXML and
any undesired controls, including menu-items, are now trivial to find
and mark as `not visible'.

There are changes coming, however, that may not fit in with the
tangoGPS goals: notably a complete overhaul of the friend-finder
system and, it appears, the replacement of much of the internal
map-loading and -rendering code with calls to osm-gps-map.
Sander van Grieken has done some good work so far porting FoxtrotGPS
to use the osm-gps-map 0.6 API (which I've started reviewing and trying
to fold into my own branch), and John Stowers has been very receptive
to incorporating changes that we need. Sander, I know I owe you another
couple of follow-ups regarding your changes--I appreciate your being
patient as I've sometimes taken some days to write a proper response....

If tangoGPS and FoxtrotGPS are actually to diverge markedly at this
point, then I'm rather inclined to call what follows from this 0.99.4
`beta' release `FoxtrotGPS 1.0', and call the post-divergence series
of releases (with the coming invasive changes) something like
`FoxtrotGPS 1.1'.

Everything should be functionally solid at this point, and the
application should basically be `1.0 quality'. The only obvious
`pre-1.0' issues of which I'm aware in the package as a whole is:

    * There's no user manual included.

    * Many of the existing translations are only partially done.

I have spent time `shaking bugs out' of both the original code that we
inherited as well as the logic and GladeXML that I and others have added,
and presumably some of the more daring souls out there have been doing
the same with builds that they've made from their own Bazaar branches;
hopefully having an actual release will open things up to a wider audience.

Ideally, I'd like to see some packagers from the distributions pick this up
and run with it--SHR, Debian, Ubuntu, et al.... If you need help, or have
additional requirements that we're not yet meeting--let us know.

To get the OE-based distros started, I've attached a set of bitbake
recipe-files after the NEWS file :)

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

-------------- next part --------------
This is the first release of FoxtrotGPS since branching from tangoGPS.
The user-visible features and functionality of this release very similar
to those of tangoGPS 0.99.3; FoxtrotGPS does, however, include several fixes
and enhancements:

    * Thanks to libgps, FoxtrotGPS supports both the new and old
      gpsd protocols transparently.

    * The gpsd server address can now be specified either by name or
      by IP address.

    * The saved gpsd host and port settings are used at startup,
      rather than defaulting to `localhost:2947' after each restart.

    * Any pending `Load Track...' windows are no longer cancelled by
      geocoding.

    * A bug causing geotagging of photographs to fail for photographs
      taken near lines of latitude or longitude has been fixed.

    * Toolbars now have a style more consistent with other GTK+ applications.

    * The command option-parser has been replaced:
      - The "-fullscreen" option has been replaced by a more standard
        "--fullscreen" option.
      - A "--display" option is now supported to specify which X11
        display to use.
      - A standard "--help" option is now supported as a means of
        enquiring as to basic information about the program and its
        invocation.

    * A new `detail-scaling' feature has been added to the main menu,
      allowing selection of `fewer/larger details' or `more/smaller details'.

    * GUI elements directing the user to `see tangogps.org for more details'
      have been removed.


Additionally, packagers and developers should note the following changes:

    * All user-visible references in the program to the package-name
      (including paths to icons and configuration-data) are defined in
      terms of the GNU-standard symbols, "PACKAGE" and "PACKAGE_NAME",
      for easy re-branding.

    * The internationalisation infrastructure has been updated and
      extended using intltool, and now supports translations in
      foxtrotgps.desktop.

    * Issues triggering warnings from the GNU Autotools and the C
      compiler have been have been fixed. It should now be possible to
      build using GCC with CFLAGS="-Wall -Werror".

    * All libraries on which FoxtrotGPS depends are now specifically
      probed by ./configure; the package should no longer fail to build
      following successful configuration.

    * An `autogen.sh' script hass been added to simplify bootstrapping
      the GNU Autotools-based build-infrastructure.

    * The output of the ./configure script's probes for depdencies has
      been made less confusing by naming each dependency as it is
      probed.

    * The GUI has been converted to GladeXML, and is dynamically
      loaded via libglade. A GladeXML UI definition can be specified
      from the command-line via a new "--gui" option.
-------------- next part --------------
DESCRIPTION = "FoxtrotGPS is a map and GPS application using OpenStreetMap"
AUTHOR = "Joshua Judson Rosen <rozzin at geekspace.com>"
HOMEPAGE = "http://www.foxtrotgps.org/"
SECTION = "x11/applications"
LICENSE = "GPLv2"
PRIORITY = "optional"
DEPENDS = "curl gtk+ gconf sqlite3 libexif"

SRC_URI = "http://www.foxtrotgps.org/releases/foxtrotgps-${PV}.tar.gz;name=archive"
S = "${WORKDIR}/foxtrotgps-${PV}"

inherit autotools pkgconfig

RRECOMMENDS_${PN} = "gpsd"
RRECOMMENDS_shr = "fso-gpsd"
-------------- next part --------------
require foxtrotgps.inc

SRC_URI[archive.md5sum] = "73f03ba1ee1853dea077aa18518222f7"
SRC_URI[archive.sha256sum] = "c7fffa0d45f59de0b858c84e57a6325af78f97f3492ef5e4bd75d5bf0c20d689"