Geopaparazzi 3.9.0 is out

The last months have been tough. There have been a lot of contribution to the project and too few time to run after them.

So there will be no big talk around this release (not by me at least).

You will have to check through it on your own. :)

To cite the release notes, the following are the important bits done:

• user interface enhancements
• option to insert note both in gps or mapcenter position
• added min/max visualization zooms for spatialite
• added dash pattern for vector styles
• import of different bookmarks files
• enhanced support for setting sdcard path
• interactive comboboxes in forms
• integer numbers in forms
• context menu now on actionbar for compatibility
• mapview slider remembers last status
• gpx export fix for time
• fixes in map centering and zooming
• fix for spatialite data queries
• moved build system to gradle

I spent my last sparkle of energy to port the old wiki from the google code repo to the github wiki in ReST format. The next step will be using sphinx on it.  Even if the images are sometimes a bit big, it is useful and a bit better organized. But it needs love... a lot of love. Any love around?

Check it out here.

As usual it will take some time to get through the google play process... but it should be on your device in few hours.

We hope you enjoy it, there has been a lot of work by several people, both developers and testers.

Thanks in particular to Mark for the spatialite support and Eli, Tim and Zsolt for testing and constructive discussions. 

Happy Xmas!!

This year I do not have a lot of Xmas Greeting, but at least I have a very particular one (for some of you).

For all of you Geopaparazzi users particular thanks for this last amazing year and all the efforts in testing, contributing, discussing and translating.

Click here to find our best wishes for a happy Xmas!

And to everyone else, a very merry Xmas!

Geopaparazzi 3.8.0 is out

What's new in there?

Important things first: the localization. I am so glad to welcome Portuguese (Brazil) and Russian into the game.

Currently the following languages are present:

• English
• Czech
• Hungarian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Finnish
• French
• Norwegian
• German
• Russian
• Spanish
• Serbian
• Chinese (China)
• Persian

Some of them are a work in progress, if you want to help, this is the place to run to: https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/geopaparazzi/

The note workflow has been reviewed. And it was about time. Before now the old way of adding simple notes was coexisting with the new, more sophisticated way to add form based notes. While we still believe that the simple notes are nice to have, the confusing thing for users was

• what is the difference between accessing them from the dashboard or from the map view?
• when am I placing a note in the center of the map view and when am I adding it in the current GPS location?

Now both from the dashboard and the mapview the same view opens up:

As you might have noted, in the upper part there is a toggle button that allows to choose where to place the note (gps or map center). If the gps doesn't have signal, the the button is disabled and notes are placed in the map center.

Enhancing sketching: integration with markers. To enhance the drawing experience in Geopaparazzi, we asked for help to the great Markers project. So right now, when you create a sketch note, the following opens up:

and drawing gets really really smooth with it.

Since we were at it, we decided to add to all image media the ability to draw over them. So this works with map notes:

and also with pictures:

We got a bit more social. It is now possible to share notes through the usual android channels, which supports a bunch of things, as for example twitter or email.

There are two places from which notes can be shared.

The note itself:

or the note list:

This important because of two reasons:

1. crowd-sourcing just got simpler with Geopaparazzi. Notes with images can be for example be sent by a citizen or technicians to a twitter feed to signal problems.
2. my mom really loves to hear from me from time to time and vice-versa. This helps :)

Better handling of gps log. Some small enhancements have appeared in the gps log part. It is now possible to zoom to the start or end of a gps track:

also, tracks now have the start and endpoints marked to better understand direction. The start point is marked with a square, the endpoint with a sphere:

Several small changes have been done and bugs where fixed. Release notes are as usual here: https://github.com/moovida/geopaparazzi/wiki/Release-notes


One last thing to note: the ACRA project has been included in geopaparazzi. ACRA is an application crash report library, which gives the user the ability to send the developers a lot of useful information once Geopaparazzi crashes. Please use it!


Enjoy this version!

Geopaparazzi translations

Small report from the foss4g.


After some talk with Frank from the uDig community, I was tempted to do a test with transifex to support geopaparazzi translations.


Well, the test went really well and it seems that lots of boring work is taken from me, so the switch will be immediate.


Nice thing is that during the transifex test, a czech guy asked me to do the translation, so it looks like a good move to make :)


I am sorry for the inconvenience for the translators. if you are one, please create an account at transifex and apply for the geopaparazzi project there:

https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/geopaparazzi/

Thanks to the crowdin team for hosting us up to that point.

Thanks for all of you for the translations.

The  translations have obviously been ported. The crowdin project will be closed in a couple of days.

Geopaparazzi 3.6.0 is out

I know, I know... my last announcement was about geopaparazzi 3.4.0. And there have been some versions in between. But time has been few lately, so you will hopefully excuse me if I jump directly to version 3.6.0.

So here it is: Geopaparazzi 3.6.0 has been released to google play!!!

Also because my new job was one one side the thing taking my time, but also the one that lead to some of the nicer enhancements here.

Let's first see the fixes done for this release:

• gps looses fix sometimes when user standing still + odd gps behaviour
• delete notes doesn't delete image notes  
• sketch note from gps not inserted  
• simbols are not places exactly on spatialite layers
• notes removal should remove any type of note  
• sketch view sometimes crashing

The first is no doubt the most important. Lately the gps was sometimes behaving odd. But that should be fixed now.

An the new features in quite scrambled order:

1) created a list view for notes and bookmarks to zoom to and edit them

This substitutes the remove notes from mapview. Now the notes have their own list and can be removed or zoomed to from there:

More here.

2) added mbtiles support

It is now possible to load an mbtiles database into the geopap maps folder and it will appear as tile source.

3) notes can now be customized and labeled

More here.


3) the map cross can now be customized in size, stroke width and color

See the screen preferences.

4) added option to use a user inserted path as external storage

This can be used for those devices that have more than one external storage recognized by the device. Use it at your own risk. We use it regularly, but it needs to be done properly.

5) Added a secret view!!!!

If from the dashboard you push many times the back button, at some point the secret view will appear to you. There I intend to collect some small tools that are meant to more advanced users, that also would like to help the developers of the project.

From this view one can browse the internal database:

or activate an indoor demo mode.

More here.



I am quite happy with that release, I hope you will enjoy it!!

UDIG 1.4.0 RELEASED

I am really happy to announce that uDig 1.4.0 has been released.

I will just link you directly to the announcement post.

Course: Geographic scripting in uDig - halfway between user and developer

I recently gave a course at the University of Potsdam about scripting in uDig. Since I didn't want me to take again more than a year to get this to you all (see here), I posted them already to slideshare.

This will soon be converted to a tutorial for the uDig community and available from its documentation section.

It will also be the big version of what I am going to present as a workshop to this years FOSS4G. Lets see if it gets picked.

Part 1: Introduction to uDig

Part 2: Data in uDig

Part 3: The scripting console

Part 4: Geoscript

Part 5: JGrasstools & Geoscript

Enjoy and share if you like them!