3.17.11, the first pre-release for 3.18.0, out now!

[Steve8x8]

Although there may still be some hidden quirks, after 3 weeks the time has come to have a "working" GeoToad again.
With the 20130821.1 HotFix, GS has removed explicit GUID pointers from its search result tables.
Inserting an extra "wid search" as done in the temporary workaround, will cause a two-to-ten-fold number of requests being sent to the servers - something that's got to be avoided by any means.
The solution chosen involves a "dictionary" to translate WIDs (the GC codes, which are happily available everywhere) to GUIDs.
An initial version of this dictionary (named mapping.yaml) should be created outside of GeoToad by parsing all the collected cdpf.aspx files - they have the GUID in their names, and the WID in the title line. Please see the "Dictionary" wiki page for a bash script - I'll add something useful for Windows when I find some.
Should GeoToad come across an unknown WID, it will try two different approaches to find out the GUID - of course this cannot be done without querying the server, but at least the first method won't add another file to your cache tree (the second will fetch the cache_details page).

There is no 3.16.x anymore as the code bases had converged already, with the goal to release 3.18.0 at the end of summer.
3.17.11 is an offer for all those who are bold enough to risk some developers "features" (I haven't detected any non-functionality in my tests, but I'm somewhat limited when it comes to crazy ideas). It's a pre-release version, with little to be added for 3.18.0 - it's your turn now to find the remaining hidden issues, as 3.18.0 can be only as good as its testers.

3.17.11 may be followed by 3.17.12 etc if necessary, but the final goal is to get 3.18.0 out of the door before, say, equinox or two days after.
Please make that happen.

Thanks for your patience.
 -S

[Steve8x8]

3.18.0 is out, incorporating the largest patch set of all times, well, the past two years at least.

This release closes:
- the separate development tree, as I cannot see any use for that anymore - I might change my mind next year...
- issue 245 (ambiguous "cache by owner" strings)
- issue 274 (transition to Ruby 1.9, and therefore full support for UTF-8 -> Korean, Greek, and Japanese may work now)
- issue 279 (transition to Google Geocode API v3)
- a couple of non-reported issues that showed up in daily use

It also tries to resolve at least 95% of:
- issue 198 (PMO caches "dropped" even for PMs)
  + please test to find remaining quirks
- issue 271 (support for road navigation devices, e.g. nüvi)
  + it might be useful to have "TourGuide" support (radial approach signals, instead of on-road), but gpsbabel doesn't know about that
- issue 277 (the BIG CHANGE that removed almost all access to GUIDs which are used to index printable cache descriptions etc, and broke a list of parsing patterns)
  + a few patterns may have slipped my attention

Note that part of the solution to issue 277 involves a "dictionary" file. I have been asked to distribute a full one - but the size would be ~100MB, and its construction would immediately void my GC account. As it will be built sequentially from all your requests, there will be a doubled number of GC accesses for a short time - please keep this in mind when running your queries.

There will be no 3.19.x, please adjust your configuration in case you accessed the Debian/Ubuntu repository. Your current version of GeoToad should find out about the release within 3 days, and tell you about it. (I'd recommend not to wait any longer.)

There are still a few minor patches in my pool which will get separate testing - if you're willing to participate, please see the "Started" issues list.

Now enjoy,
 -- S

[Steve8x8]

Once again, there's a latest and greatest GeoToad release available. 3.18.1 fixes most (if not all) remaining issues with the August 2013 HotFix, tries to sort out a few inconsistencies when handling dates, and removes HTML entities from cache, owner, and finder names (with UTF-8 it finally can be done).
Some issues still require testing (and proper error reporting), please see the Issues page. There might still be problems with (premium) member-only caches, and statistics - since I'm no PM, my options are somewhat limited.

If you are using Debian/Ubuntu, had been tracking the development branch, and didn't do so yet: Now is the time to add the "stable" source to /etc/apt/sources.list - otherwise you'd miss the upcoming releases.