MAPPER 1.8 (C) UK 1994 Steve Litchfield ======================================== General 3-Lib, CIX, Compuserve etc release. Requires Psion Series 3a or Acorn PocketBook II, with 76k to 111k of free disk space (depending on overlay modules installed) and approximately 100k of free system memory to run in. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [NOTE: future versions of MAPPER will be separated into the core program and a bunch of overlays, for your convenience] Quick summary for v1.8: (changes since 1.7) Added Camping and Caravanning Club sites overlay; fixed the 'home town' in custom list bug; added TV transmitter overlay. Quick summary for v1.7: (changes since 1.6) Added 433MHz amateur radio repeater overlay; fixed the post-code bug in cases where there was no custom town list; added Luton, the A14 and Dunsfold airfield, plus a few other data fixes. Quick summary for v1.6: (changes since 1.5) Added aircraft beacon overlay; added first cut at 145MHz amateur radio repeater overlay; minor program and data bug fixes and additions; extra error handling dialogs. Quick summary for v1.5: (changes since 1.4) Greater modularity, i.e. you can install none or all of the optional MP3 modules and their icons; 'Roll your own' overlay features; support for a 'home' town and journeys from it; all item overlays are now in MP3 format and the 'sticky' overlay feature now remembers the names of all individual overlays; database of custom towns is now editable under DATA, including post-code entry; custom towns' post-codes now show up in searches; notes and warnings now only appear *once* within each MAPPER session; prettier title screen; Thames estuary now better modelled; more roads, more railways etc; new auto-zoom/detail matching setting; road naming now more frequent at high zoom; MAPPER now displays full northings/eastings and latitude and longitude for a given point; fuel economy calculations; compass bearing calculations; improved race-course and airfield overlays (now covers whole UK); smaller icons used for overlays; new football grounds overlay; and of course data fixes in the main town database. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Apologies to those whose suggestions have not yet been implemented, please be patient, I'll get there in the end ..... Introduction. ------------- Welcome to MAPPER 1.8, released as shareware for the Psion 3a in December 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 want to have a handy graphical database of airfields, tower frequencies, beacons, latitudes and longitudes, compass bearings etc? Do you want to make a map of all your (for example) sales outlets in the UK, and be able to browse around it? 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 most roads on the map, as the sheer amount of data involved would make the program prohibitively large. Within this limitation, MAPPER may well fit one or several of your needs... Components and Installation. ---------------------------- MAPPER v1.8 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, you're bound to need these ....} 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, and the title screen {optional files, install if you feel the urge ....} LITTLECH.MP3 - a data-set of all Little Chef restauarants in GB. HAPPYEAT.MP3 - 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 in GB. FOOTBALL.MP3 - a data-set of all the football grounds in GB BEACON.MP3 - a data-set of all aircraft beacons in GB REPET145.MP3 - a data-set of the Rn 145MHz radio repeaters in GB REPET433.MP3 - a data-set of the RB 433MHz radio repeaters in GB CAMP&CAR.MP3 - a data-set of Camping & Caravanning club sites in GB TVMAINTX.MP3 - a data-set of TV transmitters in GB LITTLECH.PIC, HAPPYEAT.PIC, NOVOTEL.PIC, TRAVELOD.PIC, RACECRSE.PIC, AIRFIELD.PIC, REPET145.PIC, REPET433.PIC, BEACON.PIC, CAMP&CAR.PIC, TVMAINTX.PIC and FOOTBALL.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 .... =======all the above support files live in the \APP\MAPPER\ directory====== MAPPER 1.8 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 1.8 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 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 screen 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 to give more room on-screen. No need to re-install the software, just use the registration menu option and type in the code! c) A direct say in how the program develops. Future upgrades to MAPPER will be free for registered users (apart from any postage and admin 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. 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 (Psion-s) 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-) Important! 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') (iv) Use the 'Northings/Eastings/Latitude/Longitude' menu option. At v1.8 of MAPPER, this acts in a similar way to centre-select, in addition to the position information given. 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. Once you have a place selected in the first 'slot', MAPPER will show a new menu option under 'Towns', letting you set this place up to be your 'home' town. The advantage of doing this is that if you do a lot of trial journeys from the same location, you can set the starting town as your home town and then instead of having to re-find it each time you start MAPPER, you can simply do Psion-H and there it will be, ready-selected! 6) Overlays Firstly, there are two .MP2 overlays, for roads and railways. These will always appear in the 'Overlay' menu. The road names and railway timetable numbering can be independently turned on or off from the 'Settings' dialog. Secondly, MAPPER provides the facility to use extra overlays of your choice by means of the 'Select an MP3 overlay' menu option (psion-L). 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, As the overlay is being accessed an information line will appear at the bottom of the screen if reference fields are turned on, telling you what the reference fields represent for that overlay. There are three ways to create your own overlays: (i) Use the overlay creation menu options to create an overlay and then use the point and shoot method to identify where you want each item icon to appear, together with information for the reference field. This method can obviously be time-consuming if you have a lot of items to enter. (ii) If you have a lot of items in your overlay and you know their OS northings and eastings, you can make the MP3 file yourself by preparing (for example) a CSV text file and then importing into DATA. The format is: Standard DATA file, named xxxxxxxx.MP3 in \APP\MAPPER\ 4 text fields: Name, Eastings, Northings, Reference Info The first record is a header record and should contain (What the reference fields represent) (What the name fields represent) (Blank) (Blank) The second record and following records contain (Name) (Eastings) (northings) (Reference info) If this is not clear to you, then please get in touch and I can arrange to help you construct your overlay. (iii) The third option is if you only have information in latitude and longitude or in paper map form and require extra help to construct an overlay. Pleas get in touch and I'll see what I can do! Please note that although these MP3 files are editable under DATA, you will run into a few problems if you update the records in the file on a flash disk, as the file *must be compressed* for MAPPER to use it, and the 3a won't let you compress a file on a flash disk! This will be addressed in a future MAPPER release, in the meantime, you'll have to copy the file onto your internal or RAM disk, make the changes, compress the file and then copy it back over into the \APP\MAPPER\ directory on your flash. You will probably want to create a custom icon as well. In this case, MAPPER needs a 17 by 17 single-plane PIC file of the same filename as the MP3 overlay, but with a PIC extension. 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. The compass bearing for the 'crow-line' is also given. 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. Once you've set up your fuel costs and economy in the Personal Settings menu option (Psion-E), MAPPER will try calculating the fuel cost for the journey as well! 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) Auto-zoom/detail: can be off or on. This tries to intelligently set the detail level based on how far you've zoomed in or out. It can be turned off manually in this dialog, or is turned off automatically if you use any of the manual detail settings (e.g. + and -) (ii) Crow-line between selected: can be off or on (iii) 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. (iv) 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. (v) 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 .... (vi) 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. (vii) Overlay Item reference fields: can be off or on, depending on how much info you want on each overlay item. (viii) 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. (ix) Fuel price per gallon to use in calculations (x) Fuel economy in miles-per-gallon to use in calculations (xi) 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. It is also useful when you've interrupted a display to use a menu option, and want to re-draw it again in full. 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 30 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'. Plus of course the place's post-code. 14) Deleting info from the custom place database The \OPD\MAPPER.DBF file is editable under DATA, so you can delete individual towns etc and modify them in this way. Please remember to compress the file before exiting DATA ! 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 ... DRAW also comes in handy when creating the 17x17 icons used for custom overlays .... _+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_ 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.DBF (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. Thanks very much to the members of this conference for their suggestions, help and the supply of data-sets! I owe you guys a pint or two!