[Merkaartor] Why I love QT - MerkaartorMobile

[Chris Browet]

I LOVE Qt. This afternoon, I tried to compile Merkaartor for WM5 and,
besides 2-3 edits because of the compiler, it did!
I then tried to start it under the emulator... and it did.

I didn't yet tried to load a map but, besides performance, I expect it
to just work.

So, in the coming months, there will probably be a MerkaartorMobile.
The idea is not to have a full-fledged editor on a PDA, though, but
rather a powerful tool to do tracking/mapping on-the-go.
I checked the other WM tool supporting OSM but didn't like it as they
were and as they are closed-source... (why in hell do the developers
have to go close-source when there is "windows" in the OS name?!).
Besides, using Qt would probably allow it to run on any linux-based
PDA (Qtopia, of course, but also Android, maybe)

Of all, I like the interface of OSMTracker best, so it would be
something similar.
The code base will obviously be the one of Merkaartor. Only the UI
will have to be adapted to a mobile screen estate and to the specific
feature set, so it will probably be a sub-project.
In the previous months, features like a merkaartor document and tile
caching have been added which would allow off-site tracking.
All we still need is GPS support (quite trivial as NMEA import is
already there) and maybe a binary merkaartor document because of the
mobile memory constraints.

I'm more than open to your suggestions if you are interested in the topic.

Regards
- Chris -