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Text File | 1994-11-19 | 19.9 KB | 405 lines

MAPPER 1.4 (C) UK 1994 Steve Litchfield ======================================== General 3-Lib, CIX, Compuserve etc release. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Quick summary for v1.4: (changes since 1.2) Status window can be resized or removed (registered users only!) for increased map size. Cross-hair can be speeded up with Control key in point selections. Post-codes now in the database for most of the 1100 towns in the MAPPER database, and can be displayed or searched for. Mechanism in place for additional custom .MP3 overlays (Travel Lodges, Novotels, Race courses, Airfields included in this v1.4 ZIP file). Default icon when custom one not available. Railways now available for overlay in the same way as the motorway network, together with their time-table numbers. Useful numbers now include RAC stuff and the facility to make an electronic note of your personal AA/RAC etc membership number, up to 18 characters. Several minor bugs and data errors fixed. Found town names don't need 'Y' confirmation when match is exact. Sticky last overlay function, for convenience. Some more motorway bits and primary routes. Keystroke-counting nag screens removed. --------------------------------------------------------------------- This is very much an evolving product, and new data sets and bug fixes, data fixes and suggestions are being implemented all the time. The accuracy of data in the .MP3 overlays is limited by the original data, though I will endeavour to fix data as errors are pointed out. Register now to stay part of MAPPER's development! Apologies to those whose suggestions have not yet been implemented, please be patient, I'll get there in the end ..... Introduction. ------------- Welcome to MAPPER 1.4, released as shareware for the Psion 3a in November 1994. All rights reserved, and copyrights, including the database files and their format. Have you ever wondered where, say, 'Faversham' is? Or one of another many hundred towns across Great Britain, which you've heard of but have no idea of their location? Or you've got a mystery post-code you want to check out? Do you ever need to know the distance between two towns or cities? Or view your impending journey graphically to give it a sense of context and direction? And get an estimate of the time it'll take you to get there? Would you like to know where Motorways, Railways, Happy Eaters, Little Chef restaurants, race courses, Travelodges, Novotels, Airfields (and other items of your choice, e.g. sales outlets, widget dispensers) are in a particular geographical area? Have ever wanted to show people where you live, and you can't find a map or a postcard to scribble on? Do you own a Psion 3a? If so, then MAPPER 1.4 is for you. One thing it *cannot* do, for space reasons on disk, is calculate 'best routes', or even display most roads on the map, as the sheer amount of data involved would make the program prohibitively large. Within this limitation, MAPPER 1.4 may well fit one or several of your needs... Components and Installation. ---------------------------- MAPPER v1.4 contains the following components: (note that an example MCLINK script file is included, called INSTALL.SCR, which you may wish to customise for yourself and use it to save yourself some typing) MAPPER.OPA - the main program module. Place this in an \APP\ directory on any Psion drive, and install onto your system screen with Psion-I. ====Other support files, to be placed in a \APP\MAPPER\ subdirectory==== {compulsory files} GB.MP1 - a data-set of approximately 1100 towns and cities COASTLIN.MP2 - a data-set showing the coastline of GB and a few close islands, plus the national boundaries MOTORWAY.MP2 - a data-set of the GB motorway and (part of the) primary route network RAILWAYS.MP2 - a data-set of the GB railway network (excluding some local or irregular services) MAPPER.PIC - some icons for use with the overlays, including a default one. {optional files} LITTLE.MP1 - a data-set of all Little Chef restauarants in GB. HAPPY.MP1 - a data-set of all Happy Eater restauarants in GB. NOVOTEL.MP3 - a data-set of all Novotel Hotels in GB. TRAVELOD.MP3 - a data-set of all Forte Travelodges in GB. RACECRSE.MP3 - a data-set of all race courses in GB. AIRFIELD.MP3 - a data-set of all airfields south of Liverpool. NOVOTEL.PIC, TRAVELOD.PIC, RACECRSE.PIC and AIRFIELD.PIC are the on-screen icons for the above .MP3 overlays, and will be used if present. If they are not present, a default 'star' icon will be used .... ===================================================================================================================== **NB. The primary routes are still being digitised, so expect more of them to appear in the next release of MAPPER. ** MAPPER 1.4 needs approximately 100k of system memory while running. If you try to start it with less than this amount available, it will warn you and exit. Shareware notes. ---------------- MAPPER 1.4 is shareware. This does not make it a free program! Yes, you can copy it freely to friends or acquaintances, or even upload it to bulletin boards etc, but if you like it and continue to use it, then you are honour-bound to register the program by sending me a cheque for †11 (pounds). Registration gets you: a) a clear conscience that you're using paid-for software, and that you're helping support future development of MAPPER and other quality Psion shareware software. b) a special code that will personalise your copy of MAPPER 1.4, remove the opening shareware and advert 'nag' screens and let you access the program more conveniently, including the ability to add your own place names to the MAPPER database and shrink the status window if desired! No need to re-install the software, just use the registration menu option and type in the code! c) Notification of any future major upgrades to MAPPER and a direct say in how the program develops. Upgrades to MAPPER will be free for registered users (apart from any postage and packing costs for diskettes etc, if necessary). Operation. ---------- 1) Starting up The first screen you will see is the shareware 'nag' screen. This opening screen can be gotten rid of by registering MAPPER 1.4 with me. Other nag screens will crop up from time to time in the program until you register, to remind you to do just that! The first time you go into MAPPER, the default zoom and position are used, but thereafter it will remember where you were and what zoom level you were on, for your convenience. It will also remember various other settings from session to session. Try out the 'Settings' menu for an idea as to what you can customise etc. Browse round the menu system in general to get an idea of what the program can do. Please be patient as the display is redrawn, it may take several seconds if you have zoomed out and there is a lot to display. You can interrupt the re-draw at any time by pressing an arrow key or the menu key. When you first start, the status window occupies the right-most third of the screen. This window's job is to give you information! ... oh yes, and to tell the people gathered round you the name of the program you're using and *whether you've registered* or not .... 8-) Note that once you've registered, you'll be able to use Control-Menu in the usual Psion fashion to toggle the size of the status window between large, small and invisible! 2) Zooming You can use the Psion-Z (Zoom) and Psion-O (Out) hot-keys to increase or decrease the level of zoom, from 1x to 32x. For convenience, the 'Z' and 'O' keys on the keyboard will do the same, to save you pressing the Psion key each time. 3) Moving around (find, centre select etc) Moving around is generally accomplished in one of three ways: (i) Using the arrow keys or Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys one press at a time to scroll the whole map in the direction of the arrow, OR (ii) Using the 'Centre select' feature to position a cross-hair on the spot you'd like to use as the map centre, OR (iii) Use the 'Find' or 'Postcode' features to actively go to a particular place. (See sections below on 'Finding' and 'Postcodes') 4) Detail levels There are four levels, (i) None, (ii) Major cities only, (iii) Major cities and major towns and (iv) All towns in the database. User-selected towns will appear at all detail levels. You can change the detail level using Psion-(plus) and Psion-(minus), to suit your needs. Again, for convenience, the '+' and '-' keys do the same thing, so you don't *need* to press the Psion key each time. 5) Finding and selecting places Using 'Find', (Psion-F), you can get MAPPER to search through its town database (including any extra places you've added) for any and all matches. When it comes up with the place you were looking for, press 'Y', as prompted. The place name found is then termed 'selected' and appears in the top slot in the selection window (the bottom-most white pane in the status box), and is also shown in bold type on the main display, and the map re-centred. Note that if the place found matches your search string *exactly*, no confirmation dialog box needs to be shown, MAPPER just goes right ahead and selects the town! Using 'Find' again results in the second 'slot' being filled, i.e. you then have two places 'selected' and the map centre is automatically placed mid-way between the two and the map zoomed out or in to fit both on screen, so that you can see at a glance the relative positions of the two places. The 'Distance between selected' menu option is then enabled, as you now have somewhere to go from and to! See below, under 'Distance calculations' for more info on this. With two places selected, a 'crow-line' (i.e. point to point) line is displayed between the two (if enabled under 'Settings') to help you. This is of most use when you're scanning along your intended route zoomed in, and so cannot see on screen your start and finish point anymore. Having the crow-line allows you to see at a glance restaurants, hotels etc which aren't too far from your intended direction of travel. If you use 'Find' for a third and fourth time, etc, the place found simply overwrites the town in the second 'slot'. To clear the selections made, in order to examine some different places, use 'Clear selected' (Psion-C) on the menu. If you want to go back to centre the map on your first selection, you can use 'Clear 2nd selection' (Psion-V) to accomplish this. 6) Overlays Firstly, there are two .MP1 overlays, Little Chefs and Happy Eaters, and these are tied to menu options in the 'Overlay' menu. These will always appear in the menu. The 'reference field' information for these overlays is the LC or HE chain number for each restaurant. Secondly, there are two .MP2 overlays, for roads and railways. Again, these will always appear in the 'Overlay' menu. The road names and railway timetable numbering can be turned on or off from the 'Settings' dialog. Thirdly, MAPPER provides the facility to use extra overlays of your choice by means of the 'Another overlay' menu option (psion-N). This option brings up a dialog box, looking for any .MP3 overlay files in the \APP\MAPPER\ directory, and you can scroll through them in the normal Psion fashion to select the one you want. Each .MP3 overlay contains a data-set of items, each having a name, a location and a reference field. For example, the 'Race course' overlay's reference information represents the office phone no. for each course. Display of this reference information can be toggled on or off in the 'Settings' dialog, Please note that at v1.4 of MAPPER, the creation of these .MP3 overlays is a bit hit-and-miss and needs to be done by myself, Steve Litchfield. When I finally get the latitude and longitude import working *properly*, I may well roll this functionality into the main MAPPER program. Watch this space. In the meantime, if *you* have a list of geographical items with lat/long coordinates, or even better, a map showing where they all are, that you would like turned into a .MP3 overlay, please get in touch! 7) Motorways and Primary routes, railways. Data from the database of motorways (and a selection of primary routes - more planned in the near future) can be shown using 'Psion-M' or just (for convenience) 'M'. In similar fashion, railways can be displayed with 'Psion-Y' of just 'Y'. 8) Distance calculations Once you have two places 'selected' (their names will appear in the selections pane of the status window), you can ask MAPPER to do some calculations. Use 'Distance between selected' (Psion-D) on the menu to do this. MAPPER will calculate (in miles and kilometres) the as-the-crow-flies' distance between the two places and display the result. It also has a jolly good stab at making an estimate of the 'on-the-road' distance, based on a fudge factor. This may sound a bit inaccurate, but I've found it to be accurate to within 2% or so of the actual 'in-car' mileage for most journeys. Using the above estimate and your average speed (changeable in the 'Settings' dialog/menu option) it also gives a guess at the total journey time. The only real caveat to the above is, obviously, when the crow-line crosses the coast, i.e. unless your car is specially adapted (!) it will have to take the long way round, and in which case you'll have to use your common sense to estimate the actual road distance .... 9) Settings you can tamper with Your settings will be saved from one MAPPER session to the next. Stuff you can change: (i) Crow-line between selected: can be off or on (ii) Scale ruler: can be off or on. The ruler gives a visual guide to the current scale of the map, and is shown along the bottom of the screen. (iii) Motorway names: can be off or on. You'd usually be best off leaving the motorway names in, but on certain maps it can be confusing, so once again, you have the option etc. (iv) Railway names: can be off or off. For railways, the 'name' refers to the official timetable numbers, although you can never tell when these will all change again .... (v) Sticky last overlay: can be off or on. This saves you hassle, when changing zoom views or scrolling, as it automatically remembers which was the last menu-selected overlay you asked for and plots it on each screen, i.e. it 'sticks' around. At v1.4 of MAPPER, this will not keep individual .MP3 overlays sticky, they have to be chosen from the dialog each time, but postcodes, .MP1 and .MP2 overlays stick just fine. (vi) Overlay Item reference fields: can be off or on, depending on how much info you want on each overlay item. (vii) Estimate of average speed: a bit of a guess, this one, but enter your average road-eating speed in here for the distance calculation dialog to have something vaguely accurate to report. (viii) AA/RAC rescue number. If you enter your unique membership/quotable number in this line, MAPPER will remember it and it will appear for easy reference at the top of the 'Useful Numbers' screen. 10) Diamond key The diamond key is hard-wired to toggle between 'Place-names-in-grey', 'Place-names-in-black' and 'No-place-names,-only dots'. It it thus convenient to fiddle with the diamond key in conjunction with Psion-plus and Psion-minus (More or less detail) to get exactly the map view *you* want. 11) Refreshing the display This simply redraws the basic map and can be used after displaying an overlay to get back to the original screen. 12) Help Help is available from the main screen only, by pressing the 'Help' key or by pressing Psion-H. It is a much-reduced sub-set of the information in this documentation file. 13) Adding your own place names You will have noticed the 'Place new town' option on the menu. This allows you to add up to 3o or so extra towns of your own choosing to the standard database of 1104. You will have also noticed that this option doesn't work until you register the program! Rest assured, when I receive your registration and supply you with a special code to type in, this option will burst into life! Once registered and using this feature, MAPPER will prompt you first of all to pick a spot on the map with the cross-hairs. Note that if you are zoomed in a lot, the quantisation in the MAPPER coordinate system will limit your choice of locations slightly. The 'resolution' of the program is about 2/3rd of a mile. Next, there is a dialogue to fill in, giving the place name and whether you want it to be displayed to the left or right of the place 'dot'. There is a third field, which should be allocated accordingly, to let MAPPER know whether the place is on the mainland or not. Note that at v1.4 of MAPPER, you can't add post-code information for towns you add yourself. Sorry. 14) Deleting info from the custom place database Having entered a new place into the custom database with Psion-P, you may want to get rid of it for some reason. At v1.4 of MAPPER you can either use Psion-K to delete the last entry in the database or delete the MAPPER.MP1 file that is created in your \OPD\ directory on your default disk, although this latter option obviously clears all your additions in one fell swoop! 15) Grabbing the current map screen as a PIC file You may well want to grab a map screen as a standard Psion .PIC file, for printing or editing using DRAW (see small print at end) or PAINT or any other 3a bit-map editor. Grabbing the 3a screen is done with pressing 'Control', 'Shift', 'Psion' and 'S' simultaneously (it's easier to do than it sounds) and lo and behold a file called SCREEN.PIC will have appeared in the root directory (\) of your internal disk ... _+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_ Thanks for trying MAPPER! If you decide to remove MAPPER from your Psion, please note that it creates three small files in \OPD\ on your default disk. MAPPER.MP1 (custom place database), MAPPER.REG (your registration key, once I've given it to you) and MAPPERn.SET (used to store your preferences and position etc from session to session. 'n' is a number chosen by MAPPER). Important details. ------------------ Registration address (send cheque for 11 pounds to): Steve Litchfield 8 Grove Farm Mytchett Surrey GU16 6AQ Small print: ------------ 1) Reverse engineering of the program or data modules is strictly forbidden. If you would like to create a complementary program and use my data-sets, then please get in touch with me on 01252 515431. 2) Please note that I also run 3-Lib, *the* clearing-house for Psion public domain and shareware software. Send me a stamped self-addressed envelope to the above address, and I'll return the latest catalogue. 3) A useful related program to have available for editing and cropping any screen-grabs you do in MAPPER is DRAW 2.06, by Rick Andrews. This is a S3a-only full bitmap editor and manipulator and is also shareware, available wherever you got MAPPER from. 4) You can contact me via email at slitchfield@cix.compulink.co.uk, if you'd like. To speed up registrations, you can quote your email address for quick return of your registration code. 5) On-line support for MAPPER, including test versions and extra utilities are provided in the 'mapper' conference on CIX.