Feature Requests

[jackdale]

Originally Posted by nohal

Jack...
For example the people using European inland waterways would appreciate metric units...

Pavel

OK, I did not realize that they used SI in those waters for anything other than depth.

[dacust]

Originally Posted by jackdale

OK, I did not realize that they used SI in those waters for anything other than depth.

US rivers are in statute miles. As is the Intracoastal.

-dan

[jackdale]

Originally Posted by dacust

US rivers are in statute miles. As is the Intracoastal.

-dan

I learned that sometime ago. Damned short term memory.

[Baikal]

Crucially there is a need in the metric system of measurement! Help.
on inland waterways is not possible to use the measurements of the sea!!

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by Baikal

Crucially there is a need in the metric system of measurement! Help.
on inland waterways is not possible to use the measurements of the sea!!

Out of curiosity, what do you need to measure on inland waterways? Don't you get enough points of reference to navigate by? Do you have a specific dilemma? Do they post kilometer markings in the channels or something?

Also, how would this be corrected. An option in the settings dialog to select metric distances? It's not like you can measure straight anyway. Maybe we need a new ruler tool which can measure distance, but only along waterways somehow.

As for the inter-coastal using statute miles.. gah! Maybe instead of supporting statue miles in the program, we could all agree to just paint over the signs with the correct value in nautical miles whenever we sail there.

[George64]

Originally Posted by nohal

Jack...
For example the people using European inland waterways would appreciate metric units...

Pavel

For depth's, yes. However speed, distance are measured in knts en Nm

[Baikal]

Originally Posted by boat_alexandra

Out of curiosity, what do you need to measure on inland waterways? Don't you get enough points of reference to navigate by? Do you have a specific dilemma? Do they post kilometer markings in the channels or something?

Also, how would this be corrected. An option in the settings dialog to select metric distances? It's not like you can measure straight anyway. Maybe we need a new ruler tool which can measure distance, but only along waterways somehow.

As for the inter-coastal using statute miles.. gah! Maybe instead of supporting statue miles in the program, we could all agree to just paint over the signs with the correct value in nautical miles whenever we sail there.

in any maritime navigation device has a setting unit of measure including metric.

Those who go on inland waterways are used to the metric system (varies by region).
In my case, not the use of the metric system creates difficulty in using.
I am accustomed to see the speed in km / h
measure the distance in meters and kilometers
so familiar and so comfortable for me

[rgleason]

I cannot get Flyspray / Tracker to work this morning...no website. So here's a feature request:

It would be nice if the Opencpn > Settings >Plugins Tab, showed the file name for each plugin somewhere, small and inconspicuous. I think that should go into flyspray. Why? Testing / Comparing two or three plugins of the same type, there is often no way to determine the difference. It would be helpful to know the filename.

[cagney]

Originally Posted by rgleason

I cannot get Flyspray / Tracker to work this morning...no website. So here's a feature request:

It would be nice if the Opencpn > Settings >Plugins Tab, showed the file name for each plugin somewhere, small and inconspicuous. I think that should go into flyspray. Why? Testing / Comparing two or three plugins of the same type, there is often no way to determine the difference. It would be helpful to know the filename.

The log file is your friend. The info is there!
Thomas

[rgleason]

Thomas, if I have two development Grib plugins running, for example, and they are slightly different, but the version number and the icon has not been changed. How would that help? I still won't know which one is which except perhaps by the file name.

Also can I bring up the log file concurrently while running Opencpn?

Thanks.

[cagney]

Originally Posted by rgleason

Thomas, if I have two development Grib plugins running, for example, and they are slightly different, but the version number and the icon has not been changed. How would that help? I still won't know which one is which except perhaps by the file name.

Also can I bring up the log file concurrently while running Opencpn?

Thanks.

Have you tried to run 2 portable instances, to compare the different versions of the same plugin?

I can open the log while running on Linux. Don't know about win. If the file changes, I get a query what I want to do. My normal answer is "reload", to update the file.

Thomas

[armido]

Using a free download from Google Play called Turbo GPS, android tablet users running OpenCPN in a linux chroot environment are able to use the tablet's built in gps with OpenCPN. This is accomplished supplying nmea data via port 7777. Unfortunately, some tablet manufacturers have used gps chips that only provide position (lat/long) and no nmea data. Can OpenCPN be adapted to use position only information by applying the approach below?

"If the raw NMEA API is not available, use the Android Location API to get position, and then output fake NMEA sentences for OpenCPN to read.

Sample Java code to write an NMEA sentence is in the
'writeGGASentence' method in:
http://worldwind31.arc.nasa.gov/svn/...meaWriter.java

Although the Motorola Xoom chip supposedly only provides position, another freely downloadable .apk called GPS Test displays the full range of gps data, speed, direction and more. So it seems reasonable that position only chips can also provide this information to OpenCPN.

Is this doable?

Thanks,
armido

[rgleason]

Thanks Thomas

Have you tried to run 2 portable instances, to compare the different versions of the same plugin?

I can open the log while running on Linux. Don't know about win. If the file changes, I get a query what I want to do. My normal answer is "reload", to update the file.

I have not tried 2 portable instances of Opencpn, but could.
I can open opencpn.ini when Opencpn 3.2 is open. Notpad++ displays it more sensibly in html format than notepad. When, for example, I have SAR 0.7 and SAR 0.8 (Thanks to SaltyPaws, there are two different version labels for easy identification by Testers, - however these dll's have different filenames too which would be good to have displayed in Settings > Plugins > Preferences !!!).

Both of these are currently "Enabled" and "Applied" and the Opencpn.ini shows
One instance of the SAR plugin:

[PlugIns/AIS\ Radar\ view]
bEnabled=1
[PlugIns/SAR]
bEnabled=1
[PlugIns/WeatherFax]
bEnabled=1

Now I turned off SAR 0.7 and left SAR 0.8 "On"
Notepad ++ prompts there's a change, I say yes reload. It shows this now.

[PlugIns/AIS\ Radar\ view]
bEnabled=1
[PlugIns/SAR]
bEnabled=0
[PlugIns/WeatherFax]
bEnabled=1

And plugin SAR 0.8 works....? That change from 1 to 0 is boolean I expect. So why is it working? There is one SAR entry it appears.....

I don't think the Opencpn.INI is going to help me with this... telling me which plugin is running when the most recent one has not been given a new version number and it is identical with the exception of code.... (Note I have been renaming them and simply running them in the plugins directory.) I've taken to renaming the one I don't want to load with the *.doc extension when they do not have different version numbers and restarting Opencpn when I change.

...That is why I think it would be helpful to display the file name of the plugin. This may not be something everyone would need...but it would be helpful to me.

[Baikal]

Add option Auto Return vessel's position on the screen (Auto Follow)
settings in seconds

[STHR]

a) TCP Reconnect if Remote Host is down
b) AIS Info from Inland Waterways. As this is now used in Europe on inland Waterways. Like Loaded / Unloaded / Persons and Crew Information