GPX editor / route planner wish lists?

[Euan Uzami]

Yep, should be doable

[Euan Uzami]

Put some guides up
http://www.gpxeditor.co.uk/guides

these will eventually be the front page once I've put the necessary link to the map in place.

These will of course be added to as time goes on.

[hulver]

Any chance of an UNDELETE track/route option ?
Busy editing some viapoints, renaming, adding, deleting.... and didnt spot I was deleting the whole chuffin route not just a point.   

Yep, I've done that about 3 times. It's quite frustrating.

[hulver]

I've been playing around with this, and it's pretty good. It's almost become my route editor of choice now.

One thing that I would love, would be able to convert a route into a track. I realise that this would be a monumental pain in the arse to do, as you'd have to go over each route point, calculate the route between them and convert to a track. It would be great though, and fantastic for getting a better idea of the true elevation and distance of a route.

You would then be able to support the gpxx format as well, which is basically a route, with added track points.

[Euan Uzami]

I've been playing around with this, and it's pretty good. It's almost become my route editor of choice now.

One thing that I would love, would be able to convert a route into a track. I realise that this would be a monumental pain in the arse to do, as you'd have to go over each route point, calculate the route between them and convert to a track. It would be great though, and fantastic for getting a better idea of the true elevation and distance of a route.

You would then be able to support the gpxx format as well, which is basically a route, with added track points.

Thanks hulver,
I'm not sure I'm understanding you correctly but I think what you perceive to be a monumental pain in the arse to do, i.e. "go over each route point, calculate the route between them..." is already there.
If you have got a track, right click on the track and choose 'create route'. It then goes off to google's routing algorithm and says - give me a route that goes through the points on this track. The only caveat is that it doesn't feed EVERY point in the track into the routing request, it thins it out first. The produced route may not be exactly correct, but it largely places the route points on junctions, and it gives you a 'starter for 10', it should then only take a bit of dragging about and deleting and inserting and you have got a usable route.
It was a bit of a pain in the arse to do, but not too bad.

The only thing it doesn't do is embed route into track as gpxx extension (fairly easy, will do it soon) and straight route-to-track conversion (again, fairly easy).

In fact if you upload a route with a large number of route points it makes the browser fairly sluggish as it has to generate a map element for the dot for each route point, which eats memory, so I'm thinking of putting a message up saying 'this route has a large number of routepoints, do you want to load it as a track instead'.

[hulver]

Cool.

Easier than I thought then.

Now I just need to stop deleting tracks when I've almost completed them by trying to edit them.

[Euan Uzami]

I've been playing around with this, and it's pretty good. It's almost become my route editor of choice now.

One thing that I would love, would be able to convert a route into a track. I realise that this would be a monumental pain in the arse to do, as you'd have to go over each route point, calculate the route between them and convert to a track. It would be great though, and fantastic for getting a better idea of the true elevation and distance of a route.

You would then be able to support the gpxx format as well, which is basically a route, with added track points.

Thanks hulver,
I'm not sure I'm understanding you correctly but I think what you perceive to be a monumental pain in the arse to do, i.e. "go over each route point, calculate the route between them..." is already there.
If you have got a track, right click on the track and choose 'create route'. It then goes off to google's routing algorithm and says - give me a route that goes through the points on this track. The only caveat is that it doesn't feed EVERY point in the track into the routing request, it thins it out first. The produced route may not be exactly correct, but it largely places the route points on junctions, and it gives you a 'starter for 10', it should then only take a bit of dragging about and deleting and inserting and you have got a usable route.
It was a bit of a pain in the arse to do, but not too bad.

The only thing it doesn't do is embed route into track as gpxx extension (fairly easy, will do it soon) and straight route-to-track conversion (again, fairly easy).

In fact if you upload a route with a large number of route points it makes the browser fairly sluggish as it has to generate a map element for the dot for each route point, which eats memory, so I'm thinking of putting a message up saying 'this route has a large number of routepoints, do you want to load it as a track instead'.

Oh, sorry. I've just re-read it and I think I understand what you mean now. You want to go the other way to what my 'Create Route' does - i.e. you've already got a (sparse) route and you want to make it into a track, but fill in in between the sparse bits to make it follow roads.

Right - no, that's not that difficult to do at all, but it does come with the obvious warning that you have to pick a routing mode - i.e. driving, walking, or cycling - and it will use that for each request. So if you have it on driving, you may get a bit of dual carriage way somewhere that  you didn't want (although I do use 'avoid highways' for all driving mode requests), and if you have it on walking, you may get a bit of footpath that you didn't want.
In short, you'll have to check the result and make sure it corresponds with what you expected. You'll be able to re-route segments as and where necessary if it's not.

[hulver]

Oh, sorry. I've just re-read it and I think I understand what you mean now. You want to go the other way to what my 'Create Route' does - i.e. you've already got a (sparse) route and you want to make it into a track, but fill in in between the sparse bits to make it follow roads.

Right - no, that's not that difficult to do at all, but it does come with the obvious warning that you have to pick a routing mode - i.e. driving, walking, or cycling - and it will use that for each request. So if you have it on driving, you may get a bit of dual carriage way somewhere that  you didn't want (although I do use 'avoid highways' for all driving mode requests), and if you have it on walking, you may get a bit of footpath that you didn't want.
In short, you'll have to check the result and make sure it corresponds with what you expected. You'll be able to re-route segments as and where necessary if it's not.

Ah, yep. That's what I was after. If the section of the track in between each route point was a segment that could be re-routed that would be awesome. I tend to find with other gpx editors, that it's almost impossible to edit the track after you've created it. One wrong click and the whole thing goes wrong in some way, and with no undo, your hours of work are gone.

[Euan Uzami]

OK. You can reroute a segment of a track now. Right click on the segment you want to reroute, choose 'Reroute segment' and then move the mouse around gently and it will reroute through the point where the mouse is.
I'll get round to writing a proper guide to how to do it soon.
It needs to know how much of the track you want to reroute, however. For this, the segment boundaries have to be correct. It will reroute one segment, no more, no less.
So you need to do a right click (on the track) -> Split Here, at the point just before you want to reroute, and right click -> Edit -> Split Here, at the point after the bit you want to reroute.

Then right click on the segment* that is the bit you want to reroute and click Edit -> Reroute segment, and drag the mouse.

Roughly, segment splits are like bikehike's 'hard points', and 'reroute segment' is the rough equivalent of bikehike's 'drag edit mode'.


Also, most "Edit" operations (like reroute, reduce - basically things on the edit menu) on a track are undo-able - the "Undo xxx" menu item should appear at the bottom of the edit menu when you've done something you can undo.

* if it's multiple segments, to join them up:
 - make sure you're not currently in drawing mode (crosshair cursor), if so, Right click -> Stop Drawing
 - (left) click the first of the segments to join up
 - right click the last of the segments to join up, and from the menu choose Edit -> Join Selected Segments
 - they are now one segment




btw I've just done the Undo Delete function, that was pretty easy but any probs let me know.

[Euan Uzami]

The only caveat I will say is that if you Load a track from a file, that wipes the 'Undo' memory, so you can't delete a track, load another one, then undo delete. But I get the impression you're likely to realize fairly soon after when it disappears!

[hulver]

Awesome, thanks. I'm looking forward to having a play with it.

[Toady]

I've been using this quite a bit and am gradually building up my route editing skills.  Very happy with it.

Another small suggestion - it could be nice to have a pure relief map available.  It can be quite instructive to be able to look at the terrain without any other detail shown.  For example the one here:

http://maps-for-free.com/

I quite often have maps-for-free open in another tab while route planning.  You can have "eureka" moments - so that's why it's so hilly if I turn left there, there's a spit of high land sticking out into a plain.  That kind of thing.  You often don't notice the topography on a map cluttered with towns, roads, this that and the other.

[IbisTouche]

Dorte andI have been playing around with the program for the last days. We are needing a way to get from the automatic mode where the track/route is drawn to the manual mode: to draw a track over fx a bicycle path, a path in a forrest or something like that - sometimes we only need  10 meters to make a track perfect!
Carsten & Dorte

[Toady]

Dorte andI have been playing around with the program for the last days. We are needing a way to get from the automatic mode where the track/route is drawn to the manual mode: to draw a track over fx a bicycle path, a path in a forrest or something like that - sometimes we only need  10 meters to make a track perfect!
Carsten & Dorte

Draw your track as normal up to the start of the bike path/unmarked trail
Switch to "crow flies" mode (click on the bird at the right of the icons down bottom right, car, walking figure, bike, flying bird ).
Click to the end of your unmarked bit.  You will get a dead straight line.
Now return to your chosen automatic mode (car, walking, bike).

If you wanted to follow a bike path, say, as wiggled around you could put in a series of points which would be all joined up with straght lines.

HTH

[vorsprung]

I didn't realise that gpxeditor was your project, I quite like it

The only buggette I've noticed is when rerouting, in one place it doesn't correctly deal with dual carriageways.  I have a situation where attempting to reroute so that the end of the segment is on a dual carriage leads to "looping" up the dual carriage and back

If this sounds wildly interesting I can email you the file that does this

[IbisTouche]

Dorte andI have been playing around with the program for the last days. We are needing a way to get from the automatic mode where the track/route is drawn to the manual mode: to draw a track over fx a bicycle path, a path in a forrest or something like that - sometimes we only need  10 meters to make a track perfect!
Carsten & Dorte

Draw your track as normal up to the start of the bike path/unmarked trail
Switch to "crow flies" mode (click on the bird at the right of the icons down bottom right, car, walking figure, bike, flying bird ).
Click to the end of your unmarked bit.  You will get a dead straight line.
Now return to your chosen automatic mode (car, walking, bike).

If you wanted to follow a bike path, say, as wiggled around you could put in a series of points which would be all joined up with straght lines.

HTH

Oh yes,

now I understand how to do this
thanks
Carsten

[TimC]

I've been using your site with my Macs various, and have a couple of comments.

Right click: always, always results in the map zooming out as well as the (required) menu coming up.

IPad use: doesn't work, cos you can't right click with an iPad.

The crow-flies thing is useful, because occasionally I've found that the routing logic won't let me cross an A-road where I want to and will re-route me several miles to cross where it wants to! That's using OSM - it seems less picky using Google maps.

[toontra]

I've been using your site with my Macs various, and have a couple of comments.

Right click: always, always results in the map zooming out as well as the (required) menu coming up.

For me the right-click/zoom thing only happens with Firefox.  Safari has other issues where the screen locks up and no input is possible.  Chrome is the only browser on Mac that I don't seem to have problems with so that's what I'm using at the moment.  I guess these issues could be due to 3rd party extensions, ad blockers, etc.

[TimC]

Ah, interesting - I use Firefox too. I'll try it with other browsers when I get the chance.

[Toady]

Never had a problem with zooming on right click.  I use IE and Chrome, depending on what machine I'm using and which one I choose at random.

[Euan Uzami]

I didn't realise that gpxeditor was your project, I quite like it

The only buggette I've noticed is when rerouting, in one place it doesn't correctly deal with dual carriageways.  I have a situation where attempting to reroute so that the end of the segment is on a dual carriage leads to "looping" up the dual carriage and back

If this sounds wildly interesting I can email you the file that does this

It'll be because I always have the "avoid highways" option set when asking google for the route.
Turning it off would have to be a user-specific option, along with miles vs km, etc. I haven't got round to doing user-specific options yet but it's on the to do list.

[Euan Uzami]

I've been using your site with my Macs various, and have a couple of comments.

Right click: always, always results in the map zooming out as well as the (required) menu coming up.

IPad use: doesn't work, cos you can't right click with an iPad.

The crow-flies thing is useful, because occasionally I've found that the routing logic won't let me cross an A-road where I want to and will re-route me several miles to cross where it wants to! That's using OSM - it seems less picky using Google maps.

I thought it might have an issue with macs because don't they only have one mouse button instead of two? Solution: don't use a mac - they're shite! 
Does it do the same thing on google maps site?

It might not be that difficult to make a non-right click version, with just all the menus at the top - I'll look into it, because a lot of people do have these new fangled ipad things.

On OSM it doesn't use OSM's routing - it still uses google's. It doesn't matter what rendering you have, the routing provider is always the same.

[Ningishzidda]

Maps zooming in and out by unintentionally activating the Apple Magic Mouse scroll is a blinding nuisance on any mapping package.
It is a 'user problem' and not the mapping package software.

The scroll detection area on the Magic mouse, as I've discovered, does not extend to the very outer limit of the mouse top surface.
Handling the mouse by its very outer edges alieviates spurious zooming, ( most of the time ).

The other option is to drive from the keyboard.

[toontra]

One suggestion Ben.  When in route mode and naming the waypoints, would it be possible to have the "OK" button highlighted by default, so after entering your text you can confirm and close the window by a return keystroke rather than having to navigate the cursor into the "OK" box and click.  May seem a small thing but if entering hundreds of waypoints (as I do) this would save a lot of time.

I'd have thought 99% of the time people will want to just confirm their entry.  The cancel option would obviously still be there by using the cursor.

BTW I'm really beginning to like GPX Editor - Marengo will soon be a distant memory

[TimC]

Maps zooming in and out by unintentionally activating the Apple Magic Mouse scroll is a blinding nuisance on any mapping package.
It is a 'user problem' and not the mapping package software.

The scroll detection area on the Magic mouse, as I've discovered, does not extend to the very outer limit of the mouse top surface.
Handling the mouse by its very outer edges alieviates spurious zooming, ( most of the time ).

The other option is to drive from the keyboard.

Yes, i think you're right - I'll try these solutions!