Map Rotation using two Fingers has to be configurable, allow to disable that feature

[Roman Fietze]

If I configure Osmand to have north always up it should not be possible to rotate the map using two fingers.

Osmand is very often also used by bicyle drivers or in similar situations. If somebody is accidently rotating the map while zooming, it is not easy to detect and correct that fault. Even the small compass in the upper left, if enabled at all (why should one, see below), isn't very helpful, because it's small and you don't always look at it.

Somebody who is used to always have north up, e.g. Pilots, Sailors or other people who really learned how to use maps, won't even think about the possibility that their map suddenly won't have north up. Driving or walking using such a map is more than confusing  for such people.

The versions before i think 1.6 even didn't allow to rotate the map using two fingers.

Please either disallow that rotation if the user configured "north always up" in the settings, or add an additional item in the setting allowing to disable that "feature".

This rotation by two fingers was the worse "feature" that I detected in other Android map applications. And now you got that virus as well. ;)

[Andre]

You have a point. Can you create an https://code.google.com/p/osmand/issues/list ?
Thanks.

Andre.oid

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[Hardy]

Yes, please open this issue as a reminder for us.  I fully agree, I am using "North up" in all my maps for all purposes, even navigation, and I have been mislead by accidentally rotating the map. I vote for simply blocking the feature for the "North is up" case, rather than having a new setting.

 

[Harry van der Wolf]

2013/11/16 Hardy <hm.gg...@gmail.com>

Yes, please open this issue as a reminder for us.  I fully agree, I am using "North up" in all my maps for all purposes, even navigation, and I have been mislead by accidentally rotating the map. I vote for simply blocking the feature for the "North is up" case, rather than having a new setting.

 

I do not agree with only a blockage of the "North up" direction. I very much vote for having a setting. Simply because of performance reasons. I have great difficulty using the latest OsmAnd for car navigation due to the extra layer(s) introduced by the zoom and rotate functionality. For walking I use the "North up" as I'm reading a map. For car navigation I use the "in direction of movement".
By now I tried 6 other navigation apps (5 (much) worse), but all perform very nicely on my phone. Only the new  Osmand doesn't.
Switching off a setting, which I don't like and don't need at all, might increase general performance.

And as reaction to "people who really learned how to use maps" some explanation below why I use "North up" for walking and "to direction of movement"  for car navigation. if you're interested read it, otherwise you can skip it. It's about safety.

(As said above: For walking I use the "North up" as I'm reading a map, like the others say. For car navigation I use the "in direction of movement". For car navigation I'm not "reading a map" I need instructions and sometimes a quick glance where I have to go to. If that view is equal to what you see outside the car you can react much faster. The speed of which you sail or the space you have with flying as a pilot (as mentioned above about real card readers) allow for "translation of coordinates", which I also do for walking. Driving to an exit on the "route periferique" in extremely dense traffic requires a split-second reaction of what you see in front of you.
That's exactly why navigation systems default to driving direction: because it's simpler. And because it's simpler, it's safer. Being safer means less incidents. That has nothing to do with real card readers and real cards (A4 to A3 format), but with "scanning" your close by vicinity.
And I know: I always come back to safety, but that's important in my work and by now for my entire live and that's why I advocate it.

So please make this a setting as I don't like it at all when walking (and sometimes cycling) and doing some in/out zooming using 2 fingers and get a rotation on top of it.)

Harry

[Sabra Sharaya]

To me, being able to rotate the map manually is more important than having north always up. Because when the phone makes north up, it will only be right when I am actually facing north. Most of the time, I am either using the map for navigation, or trying to add a POI. If I'm in motion, rotating to the direction of movement is better. If I'm adding POI's, manual rotation is better. Having north always up only seems better if I'm just staring at the map. I do that too though.

[Andre]

Harry, I think you misunderstood Hardy. (Pretty hard to distinguish those names ;-)

Hardy doesn't want to disable "rotating view" totally,  but only wants to disable the "manual two fingers rotation" only when the map is in "North" up setting. 

Besides that,  some people can't read maps that are always "north up" and thus have difficulty reading paper maps.  They are interpreting that the map gives them the wrong "view" and "direction" when going south,  and have difficulties to "transform" that to their situation. So they would like to turn the paper map upside down.

In contrary :People who can read maps very well are able to see that the world is a steady thing and they are moving on that world in orientation to that world. Not the world is turning around them (as being the person as the center of the universe) ,  but they see themselves as a small being that is turning on that world, and the world is the centre of the universe.  Both is wrong of course,  but we have even more difficulty moving in real universe coordinates on a rotating world in a rotating solar system in  a rotating galaxy. ;-)
No,  I won't make jokes about that,  and about which people are doing better or not.

Op 16 nov. 2013 12:09 schreef "Harry van der Wolf" <hvd...@gmail.com>:

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[Harry van der Wolf]

Hi,

2013/11/16 Andre <andreo...@gmail.com>

Harry, I think you misunderstood Hardy. (Pretty hard to distinguish those names ;-)

Hardy doesn't want to disable "rotating view" totally,  but only wants to disable the "manual two fingers rotation" only when the map is in "North" up setting. 

 I did understand that. Hardy doesn't want a setting. He only wants it always to be switched off when "North up" is selected.
I do want a setting to be able to switch it off entirely: for performance reasons.

The other comment was about being able to read a map upside down or not, and safety when it is necessary to make a split-second decision.

Harry

[Andre]

I doubt if switching off only 2-finger rotation (and not map rotation while navigating ) would influence performance. Why do you think that?

I totally agree with you about safety,  however I allways navigate north up myself with OsmAnd.  For safety, a view from drivers perspective (like other navigation apps,  sometimes called 3d) instead of top-down (2d) would be even better.  To be able to choose is top. Thats a lot to do though to build that into Osmand.  We really need a bunch of extra developers!

Op 16 nov. 2013 14:28 schreef "Harry van der Wolf" <hvd...@gmail.com>:

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[Hardy]

Just to clarify, I am not sure if there was a  misunderstanding or not:

The options are:

 

(A) Automatically disable the "2 finger rotation" when a user has chosen "North is up". In this fashion, when "North is up" is chosen, "North is really up", always.   2 finger rotation would, of course, still be possible in the movement and compass orientations. 

  -> This is what I suggested.

 

(B) We introduce yet another setting: To enable/disable 2 finger rotation. We have a bunch of settings already, I guess the benchmark for new settings must be

- that many people need it,

- and, even more, that the vast majority of people understand it. Many of us spend too much time in this forum and elsewhere answering questions (Like "what actually is 2 finger rotation?") ...  :-)

 

Think of it: If only 0,1% of our 1million users has a question about this, some of us will spent time here better used in development ... :-)

 

[sympa]

I agree... settings are almost never the solution, but used to hide that the user must choose between 2 things that partially do what he wants.

In addition, I feel there are too many settings (and settings panels) already, and I've used OsmAnd for quite a while.

For example the accurate route calculation that appears in both the navigation panel and (differently) in the route calculation step. And for the panels, there is general settings. Then there are navigation settings panels per mode of transport in the settings screen. In the map screen under the menu button are per mode of transport a 'configure display' panel and also a map layers panel.

That makes 4 panels with 50something options. I cannot remember what is where, but I feel some things are misplaced or could be better organized.

There is a category of "phone preferences" or "adjust to your hardware", for example the sound channel or kalman filter.

There is a category of "things the user will change often" like POIs to be viewed, GPX track to be viewed, ... which should have bigger buttons probably.

There is a category of "personal preferences" like the display of a next turn on the map screen or transparency,

Finally managing data (map download, GPX) should probably not be in settings.

My suggestion would be to have the map as the main screen. It should have buttons for "set destination" and also a button for "settings". This links to the often-changed settings. The list of settings has at the end the link to "personal preferences", which again links to "phone preferences".

"Manage data" can appear anywhere as it is clear that is is not a setting. This could also include manage favorites.

This will make the workflow easier:

Osmand shows where one is on starting up (map downloads are now offered from the map screen)
Often changed options are reachable from there.
If looking for less common options, it is not a tree search (should only be a tree search if it is clear in which branch something can be found)

[Hardy]

Sympa, Yes, you have a point. But we have gone though several app reorganizations already and they are generally not well received, so we have to make sure that whatever we do is a clear improvement, for everyone.

 

We have likely reached a stage in our project where development has come to a stable enough stage so we were at least not forced to re-design the UI recently, so we could maybe now think about optimizing it. But we would need a complete concept, which should be reviewed by many people. Please feel free to research the different threads we have about this already.

 

As far as our history is concerned: My latest documentation of our settings structure is here: http://code.google.com/p/osmand/issues/detail?id=1356, with previous version also here http://code.google.com/p/osmand/issues/detail?id=772

 

A certain source of confusion in my experience has always been the duality between what we currently call "Configure screen", which is primarily about the widgets on the map screen, but also about some map properties itself like Map style, day/night view, contour lines, etc. and what we call "Map layers", which contains all stuff we overlay to produce the map itself, like over/underlay, hillshade, GPX tracks, POIs, etc.   While in the code it is pretty clear, to the user the difference between what is a map layer and what a map screen property is not very intuitive ...

 

Best, Hardy   

 

[sympa]

Thanks Hardy. My point was twofold: one is that adding configuration options will not make usability better.

The other is that in general there can be an improvement. That needs a lot of thinking. It is easy to point out things that are not logical. But to find something that works quick and still is powerful is hard work. It involves figuring out use cases, and counting the steps needed to achieve a goal. And it needs research to see if users understand the UI and don't overlook a button for example. And then it is still not implemented...

[Max1234Ita]

On Thursday, November 21, 2013 10:40:49 PM UTC+1, sympa wrote:

Thanks Hardy. My point was twofold: one is that adding configuration options will not make usability better.

The other is that in general there can be an improvement. That needs a lot of thinking. It is easy to point out things that are not logical. But to find something that works quick and still is powerful is hard work. It involves figuring out use cases, and counting the steps needed to achieve a goal. And it needs research to see if users understand the UI and don't overlook a button for example. And then it is still not implemented...

Hello,
IMHO, program usability should not be evaluated based on "how many" config option are there, but on "how much useful are they" and how much logically and "user-friendly" they are presented and organized in menus (this would be very appreciated especially by newcomer users).

I think the introduction of a new feature itself could impact program usability more than giving the user the capability of disabling it, if not needed. The hardest part, as sympa said, is to organize all that stuff in an efficient way, that most of the people can easily use.


Regards,
Max - Italy

[Nico W]

Why do we need a two-finger rotation? With the options of N always up, in direction of movement, or compass we have 3 choices.Does adding the 2 finger rotation really add any real value? I would not want that feature to be active during any of the 3 settings, it will confuse the h... out of me. Putting the phone in compass mode and turning the phone will rotate the map. Imagine doing that and it goes 180 degrees wrong. Good recipe for going the wrong way. Same thing with N is up.

As a professional pilot I can tell you that our maps are mostly N is up, although there are several that go diagonal. Our Nav displays have the magnetic compass heading on the top, which with a crosswind is not the same as direction of movement (you are moving sideways). They do have a feature where you can select a N is up function, we use that quite a bit for planning / checking the route. I imagine sailors do the same.

I do use my osmand map in N is up for walking, especially when hiking. It prevents the map shifting constantly, gives me a good position / starting / finish point relationship and possibly saves battery power (less computing power needed). Driving is in the direction of movement.

What I still miss is a function called "set as starting point". We've had this discussion before, but it still annoys me to have to find my destination first and then backtrack to my starting point before I can start a navigation.

[Sabra Sharaya]

The compass sensors in many Android devices are often wrong. And the user isn't always moving. Sometimes the only way to get the map to point the right direction is to set it manually.

[Max1234Ita]

On Wednesday, November 27, 2013 4:46:56 AM UTC+1, Sabra Sharaya wrote:

The compass sensors in many Android devices are often wrong. And the user isn't always moving. Sometimes the only way to get the map to point the right direction is to set it manually.

IMHO, not everybody of us is a professional pilot, and not everybody of us owns a not-working-compass device, so, if this feature could be disabled at user's choice, "Unluckiest" users would be happy of having it, and "Pro users"  would be happy of not being bothered by it. :-)

Regards,
MAx - Italy

[Peter B]

Fully agree, Peter