Not removing Destination Point when we reach it

[Victor Shcherb]

https://code.google.com/p/osmand/issues/detail?id=1917

According to this and other issues let's consider an option to remove destination point every app start (if there is no navigation pending).

Victor

[Hardy]

Victor,

 

I agree the destination should not be cleared when it is reached.

 

But why clear it upon app start?? This can be very unexpected behavior for all used to quickly marking an important location as "destination"? What's the harm in levaing the destination until the user actively erases it?

 

Best, Hardy

[Sabra Sharaya]

Maybe, if there is a previous destination point when the app starts, the app should ask the user whether to restore the previous destination point.

[Nico W]

Please leave the destination. Many times you do your research, plan your route (or not) locate the destination (and set it), then do something else with the phone before finally heading out and using Osmand.

 If you make the app cancel your destination, all the work you did previously is cancelled, now you have to start all over. This makes the program pretty much useless.

 

There is already a menu button called "clear destination". What is wrong with leaving that the way it is?

 

Example of why not to cancel destination: right now I'm staying in a hotel in China. It is not on the map (not even in POI), the road to the hotel is not on the map. So first day outside I had the GPS find my position, and marked it as "destination. Now everyday (already a week) when I go out I can go everywhere, find my way back easy either walking or by bus (bus routes are not mapped, so except for some Chinese descriptions of neighbourhoods it is impossible to find out which bus to take). When the bus gets anywhere close to my "destination" I get of and walk towards it. I can use the phone for e-mails, games, pull out the battery (to reset it) or turn it off when I need to, and when I need the map again, my "destination" is still there.

 

I can think about similar situations when camping, hunting, hiking, biking. Mark your campsite, vehicle or parking spot as "destination" and it will always be there. No more getting lost, even when turning the phone off to save battery power. Leaving the "destination" marked can be a life saving feature.

Many people get lost in the mountains close to where I live, often with tragic results. There is no cell phone coverage there (not even in the national parks with 1.5 million visitors a year!). Having a program like Osmand can get you out, even if you have to stay overnight on the mountain.

[Hardy]

Yes, I absolutely agree!

 

While I would always advise additionally saving such critical locations as Favorites, just to make overly sure to not lose them, the "automatic" deletion of your pre-set deistination is an very unexpected (and in my mind unnecessary) app behavior which many users will feel is a bug!

[Harry van der Wolf]

2013/6/5 Nico W <wiss...@gmail.com>

Please leave the destination. Many times you do your research, plan your route (or not) locate the destination (and set it), then do something else with the phone before finally heading out and using Osmand.

 If you make the app cancel your destination, all the work you did previously is cancelled, now you have to start all over. This makes the program pretty much useless.

 

As such I completely agree, so please do not remove the destination.
But  the remark "you have to start all over" is not entirely correct. Once you have set your destination(s) you can always get it back from the Search->History.
Only two taps away.

Harry

[Victor Shcherb]

Already wrote it, the problem is : 

- Every time you "Set as Destination" you got an extra dialog "Replace destination point?" which is very unpleasant.

For now I don't see any good solution.

Regards,

Victor

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[Nico W]

I think that dialogue is good, just to make sure you really want to clear out the previous "destination". .

 

Right now there is the "clear destination" button. How difficult is it to push that? Followed by "are you sure?" -  "Yes / No".

"Yes", if you are sure, "No" if you just realized you hit the wrong key. Happens all the time, right? At least I do. Small phone, smaller icons, bigger fingers...

On Tuesday, June 4, 2013 3:33:56 PM UTC-7, V S wrote:

[Hardy]

Victor,

 

  (a) Asking the "Are you sure Y/N" question after hitting "Clear destination" ist customray and should stay as it is now

  (b) Removing the former additional dialogue after selecting a new destination (with a former one already exsiting) is also fine. While I had no issue with the additional dialogue guarding against accidental re-setting, I think most people can live with the trade-in of how it is now simplified ...

  BUT: (c) Deleting an existing destination point upon app start seems completely uncessary, and to me is a bug (the app "forgets" something!)

 

Somehow I am missing why we need (c), what am I obverlooking??

[Victor Shcherb]

We need just a solution, (c) might not be good one. People who use as a car navigation are very annoyed at this unnecessary popup, personally we don't support friendly way of car navigation - 2 clicks and go. So this is a question how to solve this use case.

[Nico W]

For car navigation: "you have reached your destination, do you want to delete it from the map?" Yes / No

On Tuesday, June 4, 2013 3:33:56 PM UTC-7, V S wrote:

[Hardy]

What's wrong with this solution:

 

- When you reach the destination, stop the routing, but leave the destination in place. (In  this fashion drivers can quickly start the navigation again if they had to pass the destination because there was not parking space, etc.)

 

- When you hit "Clear destination",leave the "Are you sure Y/N" dialogue in pace. "Clear destination" is not normally used in car navigation, hence no issue for drivers.

 

- Because in car navigation, you normally select a destination and go. As I already said, it should be fine to have NO additonal question dialoge about replacing any existing destination for this "Set as destination" case, just go directly to the "Directions dialogue". 

 

- But do NOT reset the destination upon app restart, ist is completely unnecessary and serves no purpose with this solution, right?

 

Best,

Hardy

[Victor Shcherb]

@Hardy 

How to add waypoint in that case? Especially if you search by address?

Searching by address is the most used feature for car navigation.

Victor

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[Victor Shcherb]

Clear is reverted for now, but I'm looking for solution how to avoid this dialog

[Hardy]

Victor,

 

regarding "How to add waypoint in that case?":  Seems failry clear to me:

 

When you long-click on a point on the map, then tap the location box, the popu menu has BOTH "Set as destination" and "Add as waypint", with no additional dialoge needed for this.

 

For consistency I have always thiguht we need to have exactly this option "Add as waypoint" in all other places where we have "Set as destination", namely the selector which pops up when clicking on an entry in the favorites list, and on the search screens, right?

 

I had always thought that was the plan, we just didn't ge to it yet?

 

Best, Hardy

 

[Hardy]

PS: Just like correctly implemented in the popup menu, the "Add as waypoint" option should of course only appear when a destintion is already selected. 

[Nico W]

Victor, when doing the address search a little box shows up with the coordinates and two boxes: "show on map" and "set as destination" . So if you have set a destination, clicking "show on map" will be appropriate. Long clicking on that still gives you the option to set it as a waypoint or again as destination. Now if you are sure that it is the destination you want you can change it.

This needs to stay like this. 

 

Right now you are wasting your time trying to fix something that is not broke. Actually, something that works perfect for most people as far as I can see with the reactions.

 

Now if you want to fix something: the address search function is hopeless. I tried to look for 2800 E Cherry Street in Seattle, Washington, USA. It is a restaurant and convenience store in one building. Guess what. There are Cherry Street, Cherry Street (first hill), East Cherry Street, East Cherry Street (first hill) and East Cherry Street (madrona). First Hill and Madrona are neighbourhoods, that unless you live there nobody knows about. Yet for all these 5 streets (should be 1 street, with a suggestion of "East"), not a single one lists 2800 as a building , even worse, all the buildings listed are all on one side of the street. This is Osmands native library. Using the internet search function will pull this address up without a problem.

 
On Tuesday, June 4, 2013 3:33:56 PM UTC-7, V S wrote:

[Hardy]

I totally understand Victor that he wants to completely eliminate all non-essential dialogues to facilitate as-direct-as-possible start of a new navigation. And I fully support this!

 

But again, I think it can be done in the fashion I had outlined above:
- Leave the "Are you sure" dialogue for "Clear destination". It is NOT relevant for navigation start. and is a welcome safety feature for those who accidentally hit "Clear destination".
- Elimintate the "Repace existing destination" dialogue! Instead, "Set as waypoint" needs to be a button/selector entry everywhere where we have "Set as destination" (only very few places are actually missing this anyway). The original (now eliminated) dialogue now needs to pop up with only 2 options "Add as first/last waypoint" and WILL 'ONLY SHOW UP if someone used "Set as wayoint", which again is not part of basic/quick navigation, so no problem
- Do no reset any waypoints/destinations upon app restart. it is weird behavior, and a nuisance.

 

What do you think?
Best,
Hardy

[Victor Shcherb]

I agree, I will try to put 4 buttons on Address Search and Search coordinate. Will try to use ActionBar at the bottom.

Actions : 

? - Go! (calculate immediately route but we need default navigation mode for that thing)

- Set Destination

- Show on map

- Add Waypoint (conditional)

* - Internet search

For now it is possible to have 3 actions but I have the feeling that something is wrong and we might need to write down all usecases how person would like to interact with search result (specific poi, address, coordinate, history item).

Victor

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[Hardy]

Victor, cool! I think we are on the same page now!

 

For the sake of implementation, I vote for making it two steps:

 

- First implementing the remaining missing (conditional) "Set as waypoint" actions.

Yes, we may have an action bar on all search screens (instead of the action buttons we still use on some), making it consistent (also with how we have it on the Favorites screen already)

 

- Then think about an additional entry in it, something like a "Navigate to by car" option. It would be a shortcut option not offering the subsequent dialogue (Transport means selector, Show route, GPX route), but directly put you in CarFfollow mode. I guess this is what you mean by "default navigation", but I would not even make that configurable. Car+Follow will likely be it for the majority of our users.

For consistency, we must also put "Navigate to by car" n the popup / Use location menu, so people can select their destination by tapping on the map screen and directly start to quick-navigate.

 

This brings us totally in line with dedicated nav systems!

Does this sound good?

 

Best,

Hardy

[Victor Shcherb]

I'm about to commit (most likely will not be in 1.4) new action bar actions for Address/Coordinate search. So let's take as a start point, icon of course will be changed and I'm still looking for designer and hope to find soon.

Victor

 

Best,

Hardy

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[JeCh]

Hi,

I think there should be an option whether the destination should be cleared after reaching it or not (default). Anyway I think the start of navigation should be as quick as possible. I fully agree with you on this and I think your solution is pretty close to what I wanted to suggest. Anyway if I select a new destination, it should be used as a new destination without any further questions disregards if another point is currently set as a destination.

Regarding complaints about loosing previous destination, I don't see why that should be a problem. The previous destination point should always be very easy to find in history.

But I have also some more suggestions. I pretty much tried all navigations out there and have a lot of experiences with them. So I'll try to post some of my "best off" navigation solutions as a compilation of the ideas I've seen.

So first of all you need to find a destination (by address search, POI, history, coordinates or by choosing it on map, that shouldn't matter). The a menu to show it on map, add as a waypoint (if applicable) or set it as destination should appear. The next screen should have the 3 buttons for pedestrian, bike and car. And then a big "Go!" button. After clicking this button OsmAnd should immediately start navigation without further questions.

But there also should be a button to get to advanced options, which should contain following options - show track and different statistics on map, calculate multiple tracks (fastest, shortest, economical, easiest etc.) and show them on map concurrently. Also a track manipulation dialog should be implemented (reachable from the advanced routing menu), which should allow to store tracks (destination with waypoints), reorganize waypoints (add, delete, disable, rearrange etc.)

I understand it will take some time before something like this might get incorporated, but I wanted to mention this to keep such options in mind when thinking about the navigation behavior.

Best regards,
Vladimir

[Hardy]

OK.

How about the final facelift, the "leftovers" from our latest UI redesign:

- Hide/remove the 4 clickable buttons and the top bar (with the Exit-X and the "?" from our initial splash screen

- Instead add "Help" and "About" links in our Map menu, "About" points to the splash screen (same action as hitting the device "back" button)

- On the splash screen put only a non-clickable "About" info as a text box, with some version and our author info?

 

This should be simple enough, as there no code-flow, dependency of intents etc. change at all (and we get rid of the last of the old interim (greenish-yellow) icons, which would be a nice overhaul nice for a new major release)?