Wednesday 17 February 2010

Android Development on Ubuntu

I just got an LG GW620 android mobile phone. I want to use it for mapping (http://www.openstreetmap.org). There is an android editor called Vespucci available, but it needs some work to make the UI easier to use. I thought I would have a look at the source code to see if I can work out how to modify it.
The android developer web site says that it is best to use the Eclipse IDE, but when I tried I got all sorts of errors about un-satisfied dependencies.
Fortunately someone had posted some instructions to get it working on Ubuntu (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8842292#post8842292).
Now I have followed this I have a working IDE to develop Android applications, and have got a basic "Hello World" application working. I have also downloaded and complied the Vespucci source code, and run it on the SDK emulator.
Just need to understand how Android UIs work now....

Sunday 14 February 2010

Progress Mapping Hartlepool

Benjamin and I are making progress mapping Hartlepool for OpenStreetMap.
I have just run a query on my database to see how many kilometers we must have cycled to produce the map. I was really quite shocked that it was over 550 km! No wonder I am tired...
Progress with the map and the breakdown of the distances are shown on the Hartlepool OpenStreetMap page.

Tuesday 2 February 2010

Townguide Web Service Working

Well, I think the townguide web service is working now (http://www.townguide.webhop.net).
There is a simple queue so it only renders one job at a time, and you can view the progress of your job through the queue.
The source code and early documentation is stored at http://code.google.com/p/townguide.
The main thing to fix now is the output resolution - if I increase the resolution (in dpi) of the output map too far, mapnik changes zoom level and reduces the size of the text, so it is no easier to read - I need to understand mapnik style sheets now....