MAPPER (C) UK 1994 Steve Litchfield ======================================== Introduction. ------------- Welcome to MAPPER, released as shareware for the Psion 3a in October 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? 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 Happy Eaters, Little Chef restaurants, Travelodges or Novotels 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 is for you. One thing it *cannot* do, for space reasons on disk, is calculate 'best routes', or even display many roads on the map, as the sheer amount of data involved would make the program prohibitively large (although I hear that Nextbase are doing an Autoroute version for the 3a, presumably on a 1Mb ROM or similar). Within this limitation, MAPPER may well fit one or several of your needs... I can at least show the motorway network ... Components and Installation. ---------------------------- MAPPER v1.0 contains the following components: 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==== 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. 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.MP1 - a data-set of all Novotel Hotels in GB. TRAVELOD.MP1 - a data-set of all Forte Travelodges in GB. MOTORWAY.MP2 - a data-set of the GB motorway network MAPPER.PIC - some icons for use with the overlays ==========all the above are needed, so install them *all*============================================================ Shareware notes. ---------------- MAPPER 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 continue to use it after 30 days, then you are honour-bound to register the program by sending me a cheque for œ11 (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, 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! No need to re-install the software, just use the registration menu option and type in the code! c) Notification of any future upgrades to MAPPER and a direct say in how the program develops. Your wishlist will become my to-do list! (Maybe!) 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 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. At all times during operation, the left-hand 1/3rd of the screen will remain boxed and visible. This is the status window and its job is to give you information! 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' feature to actively go to a particular place. (See section below on 'Finding') 4) Detail levels There are three levels, (i) None (just user-selected towns), (ii) User-selected and major towns only and (iii) All towns in the database. 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. 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. 6) Overlays Current overlays shipped with the program are shown on the 'File' menu, but others are planned. Write to me, giving details of the overlays *you'd* like to see, and we'll discuss how best to do them! The Novotel overlay shows either a road or place name after the Novotel symbol. The Travelodge, Little Chef and Happy Eater overlays show the road names and junctions they're on. In addition, by turning the 'Overlay item ref.nos' feature 'On', an extra number appears after each icon. For Little Chefs and Happy Eaters it is their official chain restaurant number, which is useful if you can't locate a restaurant exactly and need to phone for directions. For Travelodges, the number is the chain number for the Little Chef or Happy Eater they're attached to, and a 'L' or 'H' is shown after the number so that you know which chain it belongs to etc. More overlays are planned for the future. Register MAPPER today and let me know which overlays you'd like! (In the pipeline are other hotel chains and airfields....) 7) 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 3% 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 .... 8) Settings you can tamper with Your settings will be saved from one MAPPER session to the next. Stuff you can change: (i) Colour for place names: can be black or grey, according to the effect you want to create on-screen (ii) Display of place names: can be turned off, so that just the dots representing the centre of each town are displayed (iii) Crow-line between selected: can be off or on (iv) 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. (v) 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. (vi) Overlay Item ref.nos: 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 fudge, this one, but enter your average road-eating speed in here for the distance calculation dialog to have something vaguely accurate to report. 9) 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. Although use of the diamond key makes settings (ii) and (iii) above a bit redundant, both methods of doing things are included for the sake of completeness. 10) Refreshing the display This simply redraws the basic map and can be used after displaying an overlay to get back to the original screen. 11) Help Help is available from the main screen only, by pressing the 'Help' key or by pressing Psion-H or by selecting 'Help' from the main menu. It is a sub-set of the information in this documentation file. 12) Adding your own place names You will have noticed the 'Place new town' option on the menu. This allows you to add up to 30 extra towns of your own choosing to the standard database of 1100. 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. 13) 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 v1.0 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! 14) 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 MAPPER.SET (used to store your preferences and position etc from session to session). 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-set, 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) Thanks go to Vic Cox, and 'psipple' and 'willum' on CIX, for their comments, suggestions and testing. 4) 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. 5) 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.