New fork: Osmand Touch

[Zsolt Bertalan]

After a few denied pull request I realized that I won't be able to contribute to this great project from inside and gave up. But I wanted to use Osmand my own way, so recently I started to work on my fork.

After I refactored the project (not) a bit I made the following changes:

- Added Navigation Drawer and removed pop up menu button from the map.

- Added xhdpi (double size) images for "Where Am I" button and fixed it to the bottom right corner of the map above the zoom controls.

- Moved the ruler to the left.

- Fixed Caught two uncaught exceptions at map initialization when you wanted to use previously downloaded base map.

- I made status bar to disappear, when there are no controls in it.

- Removed the main screen.

I also plan:

- Continue the refactoring with every single commit.

- Switch project to Android Studio/Gradle and fix build process (after Gradle receive the NDK support).

- The plug-ins just turn on restricted functionality in the app. This is already nice, because it makes the UI cleaner, but I might try to develop a real plug-in interface for OsmAnd. This is not easy for a complex app like Osmand, but at least we should have this as a long term goal.

- Whatever idea you have and I also like.

You can find my fork here in the "touch" branch (I named it to Osmand Touch for now):

https://github.com/herrbert74/Osmand/tree/touch

Please find the apk file in the following location:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53899314/OsmAndTouch.apk

You will have to uninstall any existing Osmand Plus installation.

Don't use this primarily, as there will be a few errors probably. Use it only for evaluation and testing. I would appreciate if you would report any problems.

I think there can be four outcomes now (with my guesses for percentage chance):

1. My changes will be pulled to the main project. This would be my preference. 1%

2. My changes will be replicated in the main project. Partly at least. 1%

3. A lot of people will be interested, so we will permanently fork Osmand. 1%

4. Not many people will be interested, so it will die out. 97%

So even if there is only a slight chance that somebody will pick it up, it's worth the effort for me, because I learn a lot, and I make the app more useful for me in the process.

I'm sure I can't manage the fork in the long run n my own, so I don't want to publish it until I find some support or it's merged into the main project. I see it as my playground at the moment. I list my reasons for the fork and other information for developers in a separate thread.

What do you think?

[pippo pluto]

exceptional!
you can do so that POI they are shown only with a specific zoom level? for me is the maximum
victor from the main fork does not want to do!
I do not want to see this crap
thanks

[pippo pluto]

it would be possible to do so that the text of then with what the map do not overlap?
or if there is already written on the map formulation can disable the text POI ?
are often illegible and when you are in the sun the result worsens monstrously
On the map POI descriptions should be tarnished with a box because they are illegible

[pippo pluto]

the map with all POI enables in orribile when zoom out ! there is a solution for this ?

[pippo pluto]

hiking trails in the name of the streets adapts to become illeggiblie path if the path is complicated, you can just show it with full zoom or in these cases put the text only horizontal?

[Zsolt Bertalan]

Sorry Pipo, but I'm an Android developer. I can change the UI like the buttons and the logic of the app. What you want is either to filter or customize the input data or to change the routing/rendering engine, which is now written in C++.

You can learn how to customize your data here:

https://code.google.com/p/osmand/wiki/HowToPrepareYourOwnDataToUseOffline

https://code.google.com/p/osmand/wiki/CustomizeOBFFileContent

http://osmand.googlecode.com/files/Custom_Rendering_How-To.docx

or generally in the project wiki:

https://code.google.com/p/osmand/wiki/Welcome?tm=6

or learning to manipulate OSM data on the OSM website.

[sympa]

I think what Pippo wants is pretty smart. When there are a lot of POI of a group close together, render only a subset. Maybe with a hint pointing at not-rendered items (i.e. draw a double POI icon so the users sees there is more infor than shown).

On zoom, some extra POI will be rendered normally. And as long as POI are suppressed, some of the POI are rendered in this 'you see one but you can see we are at least two' style.

Of couse, you want to show each enabled POI category -> in this corner of the map you will find both gas stations and restaurants'. On zoom, extra POI appear. But befor zoom the shown POI are in the right locations (except the 'doubles' maybe are not).

I agree that enabling all POI makes for an unreadable map. Try all restaurants in Paris, then zoom out. Ugh!

[Stephan75]

Hello Zlot,

I managed to install your forked app after de-installing Osmand~ ... and after a very quick test I can state: Nice work!!

Because I also feel: "reduce" is the magic word we need about Osmand.

But I also see the "conflict" between doing a fork on the one hand, and all your efforts that chnages get into osmand main source code.

I would appreciate getting your pull requests into osmand main !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stephan

[sympa]

Hello Zsolt,

I think this is a very nice change to OsmAnd:

- more directactions
- less clutter on screen
- quicker to operate
- more modern look and feel

After changing the TTS laguage I had to clear prefs a few times, but that bug might also be in the normal version.

I think I'll keep this one on the tablet for now. And I would switch to it permanently if this branch was separate but also well maintained.


Thomas

[Zsolt Bertalan]

Thanks for your support. I forgot to mention a few known issues:

- The navigation drawer is dynamically created, because it's content is changing depending on what you are doing. This makes it slow, so I should cache or preload it.

- I didn't create new images for all device sizes and densities, so they might look inconsistent on some devices. I just wanted to create proof of concept for now.

And there are probably a few more.