[OSM-newbies] navit & gosmore

[ael]

On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 03:38:42PM +0000, Tim François wrote:
> On a totally unrelated note: I use Navit quite a lot. I'd never heard of gosmore until now - why do you use both? What's the pros and cons of one compared to the other?

I suppose this really ought to be a new thread.

Anyway, I had always intended to use osm on a sat nav now that it is
next to illegal to consult a map in a car (in the UK).

I recently saw a very cheap sat nav (ebuyer, F&H N30). I wasn't sure
that I could use it with osm, but at the price, it was worth trying.
Both gosmore & navit worked well. They were the only 2 osm projects
that I discovered that I could load onto the F&H Windoze system.

I discovered gosmore first, so used that for a couple of weeks
before finding navit.

My initial impressions which are based on very limited experience,
& with apologies to the gosmore & navit authors where I have yet to
properly explore, are as follows:

1) gosmore maps are barely readable in a real situation in a car
at least on my hardware. They need better contrast and thicker lines to
be usable. Walking (hand held) and maybe on a cycle, it is ok, but
really needs to be improved.

2) gosmore maps when zoomed out seem to have an eccentric idea of
which features to draw. Some zoom levels are next to useless.
When zoomed in, the display is very good, contrast etc, excepted.

3) Updating gosmore maps to match the latest osm data base is
painful.

4)navit maps have a far better display, and updating from osm is easy
and can be customised.

5) navit routing is far less flexible than gosmore. Although the xml
file seems to allow for different vehicles, I have only been able
to get a single routing algorithm to work. gosmore routing is far
better: not only does it offer car|bicycle|foot|goods|hgv|horse (!)|
etc, but it also offers a "fastest" route option for each. So gosmore
has a major advantage for routing in my limited experience. navit
routing takes me miles out of my way by selecting the largest roads,
so that on my local journeys in an area I know and have mapped, I *never*
use the navit route.
   
6) navit does not allow you to change many parameters from the user
interface: editing the xml is not an option on a limited wince
sat nav. That is a major problem with navit as of now. Even if it
worked, how do I change from "car" to "walking" when I am out & about?

7) gosmore seems to have some problems scrolling on my wince touch
screen. Adjusting debounce makes only minor differences.

8) navit has problems in its search functions when it displays, for
example, too many POIs to fit on the screen. It does not seem to be
possible to scroll down. This makes it tedious to set destinations.

9) Only gosmore produces a track log: I think navit is supposed to
be able to do this as well, but I have not been able to get it to
work, so far. So gosmore is much better if you are collecting gpx
for osm while navigating.

I hope that will do as a start. I could say much more.

In short, both projects are in active development, and both need much more
work. But both are usable with a bit of fiddling, except I can't use gosmore
in a car as yet.

On the other hand, both are impressive and complementary. 

These impressions are only a snapshot of their recent wince releases.

ael