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  • GNOME Has Big Plans For Its Maps Application

    Phoronix: GNOME Has Big Plans For Its Maps Application

    GNOME Maps began development during the GNOME 3.10 cycle and going ahead for GNOME 3.14 and beyond are some ambitious plans to make this open-source OpenStreetMap-powered JavaScript application more like Google Maps in its abilities...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    If you want to help out with GeoClue's geolocation you can run Mozilla's MozStumbler https://wiki.mozilla.org/CloudServic...n#Contributing

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    • #3
      This need a companion app for smartphones. Send-to-device aspect of maps applications are key.

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      • #4
        Does this allow offline turn-by-turn GPS navigation? Because linux could seriously use an alternative to navit for something like that. navit is a royal pain in the ass to set up due to its 1000+ line config file and no graphical tools for configuration.

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        • #5
          I'm really looking forward to this. Google Earth of some reason just doesn't want to run on my PC. Crashes right after the loading splash but doesn't segfault or anything.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by schmidtbag View Post
            Does this allow offline turn-by-turn GPS navigation? Because linux could seriously use an alternative to navit for something like that. navit is a royal pain in the ass to set up due to its 1000+ line config file and no graphical tools for configuration.
            Marble can do this since ages?

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            • #7
              It will be interesting to see how GNOME Maps does given that Google Maps provides these features already and it does so extremely well...
              I would put it more like: "No one uses this application as others do it better, so what's the point in wasting time on it?".

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              • #8
                Originally posted by Awesomeness View Post
                Marble can do this since ages?
                That's weird, I never heard of this. I've done a solid hour or two of research for linux turn-by-turn GPS navigation and this never came up. I encountered obscure incomplete projects like modrana, but not this. Thanks for the info though, this could really come in handy.

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                • #9
                  http://marble.kde.org/
                  (^ official site of Marble)

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                  • #10
                    Well, I've talked to the Gnome Maps developers last summer on Guadec and they didn't seem very enthusiastic about offline routing support. I got the impression they just want their application to be a simple easy to use app, not a full featured navigation system.

                    Originally posted by schmidtbag View Post
                    I encountered obscure incomplete projects like modrana, but not this.
                    Well, modRana isn't really that obscure - but as it is used mostly on mobile platforms (SHR@Neo FreeRunner, Maemo 5 Fremantle@Nokia N900, Harmattan@Nokia N9/50, Sailfish OS@Jolla) it might look a bit weird when running on desktop.

                    But the project is very much alive - I've released a new version for Maemo & Sailfish just this weekend.

                    Regarding incomplete - sure, there are definitely some features that are missing or not as good as they could be, but I'm basically the only full-time developer working on modRana in my spare time and can do just so much. But patches and other help with modRana development are definitely welcome!

                    About offline routing in modRana - it is supported and uses the Monav routing daemon to do the actual routing. There is also a Monav routing data repository with global coverage (~130 GB of data in all packs together) - and you can build your own, as the software used to generate it is also open source.

                    Unfortunately the Monav integration is still quite a mess as the Monav upstream is pretty much dead and modRana is using a fork with some non-upstream patches and includes a prebuilt-binary that might not even work on some platforms... And the Monav issue will be only getting worse as the Monav routing daemon needs Qt 4 and already can't be used on some Qt 5 only platforms (Sailfish OS). I've talked to the Marble developers (Monav is one of the supported offline routing backends used by Marble) and they might port it to Qt 5, but have no timeframe for it yet.

                    So I'll be probably adding support for the routing offline routing utility, which is a nice standalone & portable C application and should have a comparable or at least usably fast routing speed when compared to Monav (Monav computes routes very, very quickly). But it is still quite a lot of work - both in modRana and in the routing data repository generator to have have the routino support be as good as the current support for Monav. Again, patches welcome!

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