Four Major Plugins - New & Potential Releases

[rgleason]

:

Four Major Plugins - New & Potential Releases



Please see where you can help us writing Plugin Documentation & Testing.
Also please note there are simple needs for plugins at the bottom!

"Everyone can have a part in creating the OpenCPN family."

[rgleason]

We have made lots of progress on some of the major plugins,
Summary of Progress

such as

• VDR+ -Mike R. has done some great work on a completely new & useful version.
• WatchDog -thank you Roel
• BR_24 - thank you Hakan
• Tactics - Thomas and Rick
• Celestial Nav - Johann helped Rick with new links. Links all fixed.
• Oesenc Charts - Hubert thank you.
• Dev: Plugins & Beta Plugin program - Mike is working on this program.

But, we still have lots of small plugins to test and document, and Jon Gough would like some help testing OcpnDraw!!
Summary of Progress

There are two new Photo Galleries in the "Opencpn Books"

1. Editors Boat Gallery - any Editor (not automatic) can upload photos of their boat.

2. OpenCPN Gallery - any registered User can upload photos of their Opencpn Installation. If you are not registered as a User this will not work.

Please keep the photos at 500 pixels x 750 (or less). This is a trial to see if the feature does not require lots of management or attract spam.

[rgleason]

Registered User Corner - User OpenCPN Installations

Registered Users now have two pages where they can Edit.
These pages are part of the "Opencpn Books". One is for User Installation photo and screenshot uploads and the other is for User Opencpn Installation descriptions. Particularly notable OpenCPN Installations and writeups will be featured in the main website under News or a special section. Users are encouraged to use this area.

1. User Installations - any registered User can describe their OpenCPN installation. Insert links to your uploaded screenshots and photos to help show the installation. Technical details are important, take your time and give a complete description, or step by step.

2. User OpenCPN Gallery - any registered User can upload photos of their Opencpn Installation. If you are not registered as a User this will not work.

Please keep the photos at 500 pixels x 750 (or less). This is a trial to see if the feature does not require lots of management or attract spam.


-----
Editors Boat Gallery - any Editor (not automatic) can upload photos of their boat. Remains in the same location.

[rgleason]

Registered User Corner - User Corner
New locations to make it easier.

Registered Users now have two pages where they can Create Pages and Edit.
These pages are a new "Book" called User Corner

User_Gallery shows a Photo Gallery and has a link for registered users to upload photos and screenshots to a particular Media Manager folder. "opencpn:files:gallery_user".

Particularly notable OpenCPN Installations and writeups will be featured in the main website under News or a special section. Users are encouraged to use this area.


Please keep the photos at 500 pixels x 750 (or less). This is a trial to see if the feature does not require lots of management or attract spam.

The Editor's Gallery remains where it started.

Editors Boat Gallery - any Editor (not automatic) can upload photos of their boat. Remains in the same location.

[rgleason]

Roel has completed Plugin Documentation for 4 Plugins!'
These were largely from scratch.
Launcher
Object Search
SAR
AIS Radar
Dead Reconning - Done, Thank you Mike (Rasbats)

This documentation shows how useful these plugins have become.
I'd like to give Roel and Mike a big thankyou for moving the wheel with his shoulder a long way. Thank you Roel!

Perhaps Roel's work will encourage others to contribute by providing documentation! Here are the plugins that still have blank pages!!!
Debugger
Rotation Control
Projection
StatusBar
IACFleet
GE2kap - Should be more complete and have screenshots.
Goggle Earth - has links but NO Documentation. Its popular.
RtlSDR - needs to be updated
SweepPlot - needs to be updated, it has improved. Also I believe Sweeplot is now incorporated in Weather_routing. So this documentation can possibly be used twice somehow.

Also we still have to update some substantial venerable older plugins by Sean and Salty Paws that have improved and changed
Weather_routing - which is completely different and improved. Really need better documentation!
Weatherfax - which needs updates.
Great Circle Route - which is completely different and improved.

So Volunteer Editors there is still a lot to do!

[rgleason]

Bump.
Editors & Testers - small projects!
We have 6 plugins requiring documentatiom and 7 plugins needing updates!

[rgleason]

The "Books" Dokuwiki has been updated to the most current version.
There is a new shortcut for editing sections. See
https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:ckge...okuwiki_editor

Direct Access to Dokuwiki Editor
Double Click Method
With this method, the user clicks in the browser and the Dokuwiki Editor opens, loading the section of the page beneath the mouse pointer, just as it would if the section edit button were clicked. This feature is governed by the dw_edit_display configuration option. This method of accessing the Dokuwiki editor will work when either the CKEditor or the Dokuwiki editor is in effect.
You may initially have to clear both the browser cache and your Dokuwiki cache. See: caching.

We desperately need User/Editors to update many of the plugins and to create a new single page for a number of Plugins. Won't you help to advance OpenCPN? While you learn a plugin, correct or create the documentation! It is the perfect way for many users to help support the program!

Please see the list below. http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ml#post2334164
Little has changed since then!

I would very much like to focus on updating these three plugins which have seen changes.
Weather_routing - which is completely different and improved. Really need better documentation!
Weatherfax - which needs updates.
Great Circle Route - which is completely different and improved.

We also need to find any good links to User Documentation for GE2Kap and Google Earth and put that in the plugin description.

[rgleason]

At Terry's, [yachtvalhalla] suggestion.

I've changed the captcha to an SVG with audio. I've tried logging in using the audio and it works pretty well. The letters are clearer. There are other selections too. There is a math captcha that might be good, that has good accessibility, but I don't know how secure it is.

Let me know if this is working better or if we should try something else. We need to keep the bots out! Sorry.

Also there is a considerable list of Dokuwiki updates that were just implemented for security and improvements.

Just in case all you great "Editors" can't find the OpenCPN Books Docuwiki it is here
https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/do...pn_user_manual [hint] [hint]

If anyone [known] would like access to edit the Dokuwiki, please PM me. Mike and I need lots of help on PLUGINS!!!!

Thanks

[rgleason]

We hope you are enjoying the use of OpenCPN. As Users of OpenCPN, it is our responsibility to assist with documentation and testing. Lots has changed since the last Summary of Progress Report.

• Mike R. has created a new Beta Plugin area and revamped the Developer Manual.
• Roel D. has created and updated new documentation for 4-5 plugins. I've updated two. Hakan has completed a major update of the BR-24 plugin documentation. Jon and Roel have updated ODraw manual to 1.4.
• Additionally three of the four major plugins are now standard plugins and Tactics_pi (Big_TomSpeedy) is evolving and being tested. The three plugins are Ocpn_Draw (Jongough), oeSenc (BCN & bdbcat), BR24 (Hakan & the radar team)
• Many have helped with these changes and we would like to thank you all for your volunteer work.

We still have a little more to do to be able to call the Plugin Documentation "up to date".

• Primarily, there are 12 plugins that need improvements and updates to existing documentation and half of them should only be single pages with perhaps one or two screenshots!

See the recently revised Summary of Progress here



We need some Volunteer Editiors to take these small pleasurable tasks on! I hope some of you who have not contributed as Editors will give us an assist.

Thanks.

[Roel Smidt]

Hello Rick,

I wanted to put this text in the "Summary of Progress": "Roel S. (Seanymph) 2017/08/05: I will write some documentation for RotationCtrl. Give me a few days".

But then something weird happend. Somehow the text got messed up (wite lines dissappeared). See the attached screenshots. I tried to restore to your last revision of 2017/07/31 16:51 but that did not help.

I do not want to mess up the text any further. Can you restore your version of 2017/07/31?

Roel

[rgleason]

Roel, It is great you are editing that page.

This has happened to me too and at first I was really concerned.
Actually where the format starts going screwy, is usually where the ending bold ** or ending slant // characters are missing. I'll try to fix it tonight.

No worrys, keep making changes!!!

[rgleason]

Roel,

It was not ** or // at the end of bold and italic,

It was indenting with two spaces at the front so that it signalled to start one big indent which then throws all the formatting afterwards off.

Its frustrating. Hope it looks better now.

[rgleason]

The offending line beginning had an unordered list symbol (a square) once I noticed that it was easy to fix taking out the spaces.

[Roel Smidt]

Hi Rick,

It took me more than just a couple of days, but I have the documentation for Rotation Control-plugin ready now. Or at least as ready as I can make it.
It's at https://www.opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwik...e:rotationctrl

But beware:
I encountered some possible bugs while testing out the plugin. For instance: I cannot figure out how the "Tilt"-function works and I also ran into issues relating to ENC-text and to the interaction with the Google Earth-plugin.

See the document.

BTW: I tested the plugin with some VDR-files I made while sailing.

Best regards,
Roel

[rgleason]

Roel,
Those are good pages of documentation! Thankyou.
I think "Tilt" is a feature like "runway" perhaps?
Perhaps we ask Sean when he is online more.