
                               ---------
                            Project Status
                               ---------
		    Paul Fox, current RoadMap maintainer
                               ---------
                             October 2007

New Release 1.1.0

    RoadMap finally has a new public release!  It's been nearly two
    years since 1.0.12 was released.  Though the next release was
    delayed by developer turnover, and lack of time, there have been
    a lot of improvements going on -- they just haven't made it into
    a tarball until now, with the release of 1.1.0.

    Major new developments in 1.1.0 include;

	* The ability to import, export, edit, and follow on-screen
	  routes, the automatic saving of traversed track data, and
	  various facilities for storing waypoints, and other landmarks
	  and points of interest, all in the open GPX format.

	* On-screen labeling of streets and landmarks.

	* Much more flexibility in the user interface, including
	  fully customizable menus, toolbar, and active on-screen
	  objects.  The user can configure all of these, or even none: 
	  an initial command menu can be obtained simply from a
	  long-click on the screen if so desired, in order to free as
	  much of the screen for maps as possible.

	* New support for Canadian maps, and for display of state and
	  provincial boundaries, and railroads.

	* Anti-aliased map drawing, courtesy of the AGG library.
	
	* 3D perspective map rendering.

	* A more flexible database format.

    There's more detail in the changelog.

Two Branches

    In that same two-year time period, another branch of the project
    managed by Ehud Shabtai (hosted in CVS as "roadmap_editor") has
    added the ability to create and edit maps, and to upload the
    results to a central postgres database.  Since the maps as
    created can contain the meta-data needed for successful
    auto-navigation, that feature has been added to the roadmap_editor
    branch as well.  The roadmap_editor branch also contains some
    experimental UI features, better internationalization support,
    more sound support, and other useful stuff.  This codebase is
    being used very successfully in the FreeMap Israel project.
    
	{{ http://www.freemap.co.il }}

    (Sadly for many of us, google doesn't yet translate Hebrew.)

    Ehud estimates that they have mapped 75% of Israeli roads, all
    through user contributions.

Future

    But that leaves RoadMap with two codebases, somewhat (but not
    completely) incompatible with each other at many levels.  (The
    worst incompatibility right now is that the map databases are of
    different formats, making it hard to easily switch from one
    codebase to the other.)  Clearly the long-term ideal would be to
    merge the two branches, and some progress has been made, on a
    feature-by-feature basis.  Indeed, many of the features listed
    above originated on the "editor" branch.  A full merge implies a
    lot -- probably too much to expect in the short term.  But every
    feature that gets migrated in one direction or the other is a
    step in the right direction. 

Help Wanted!

    If you know something about GIS and want to help with the
    conversion of new map sources, or know a lot about Win32 and want
    to finish the WinCE or Win32 ports, or are just a good coder who
    wants better open-source mapping capabilities, please join the
    list and we'll figure out how you can help!


