as77
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Posts posted by as77
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I just returned from caching. CacheDragon performed well. A suggestion for the next version: the sound indicating the loss of the fix should be different from the one for finding the fix. Currently, there is only one kind of sound and I never know what it means.
Also, I would welcome a feature that would keep the GPS position at the center of the map. Or is that possible with the current version? Autozooming so that the destination is always on the map would also be nice (zooming out when the distance grows and zooming in as it decreases). Or does that work already? (I could not mark the destination because of the known bug, so I don't know.) Out in the field, one does not want to take the stylus out and move the map around because the destination went off screen or is too close.
[This message was edited by as77 on September 14, 2003 at 06:35 PM.]
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Still about LOC files: these files contain limited information about the cache, only name, creator and coordinates. CacheDragon replaces all the missing information with default values, e.g. the location will always be Ohio, the difficulty and the terrain will always be 1, etc. I guess it does the same if some information is missing from a GPX file. A missing data indicator like "unknown" would be more appropriate.
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Another little inconsistency: you can import GPX as well as LOC files but you can only auto-import GPX files, not LOC files.
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I noticed a small bug: if you import a .loc file downloaded directly from the cache page (i.e. containing only one waypoint) then CacheDragon is unable to interpret the data in the file and in the database it will show the cache as "unnamed cache" with some default coordinates in Ohio. This is probably related to the fact that these files contain all the data in a single line with no spaces.(.loc files created from a search result with the "download waypoints" option are formatted, the lines are wrapped and CacheDragon imports these correctly).
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Happy to hear the good news, David
Just a note: The version number shown at Handango is still 1.09, although the upload date is 9/10/03, so it is actually v1.1. The description is also old, it says that this is a public beta.
I'm gonna give it a try this weekend.
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Just bringing up the topic...
Still waiting for a decent release of CacheDragon...
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You mean those .loc files that can be downloaded from geocaching.com? CacheDragon can import those. (There are two different .loc formats, the other one is used by the program EasyGPS, it is a completely different format than the geocaching.com .loc format.)
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I tried version 1.09 today on my Dell Axim with a Globalsat CF GPS unit. It worked fine. It did not produce any error message and did not crash. There are a few cosmetic problems, e.g. text not fitting on some buttons, etc. But otherwise, pretty good. I'm waiting for v1.1 and most likely I will buy it.
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abarber, I respect your way of thinking but I don't think many people think that way. I would never buy a program that does not work, there is no guarantee that the author will ever fix the bugs and then I'm stuck with a useless program for my money.
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David, I think that releasing the 1.09 version only for registered users is not a good idea if you want to check the presence of the crash-on-lock bug. Obviously, the people who have the crash-on-lock problem with the 1.0 version did not register the program (including myself) because nobody will pay $20 for a program that does not work. It's exactly the people who did not register that can test your program for the crash-on-lock bug. Please consider this. For example, I could check it out for you on my configuration (Dell Axim with Globalsat CF GPS).
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Hey, you are not reading? The geocaching.com LOC file is not the EasyGPS LOC file. It is a different format.
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Looks like there are two types of LOC files. One is the one that EasyGPS exports. The other one is the one that geocaching.com offers for downloading for the caches. The latter one is sometimes called "geocaching.com LOC file" or "Groundspeak LOC file" and seems to be very simple. I found a description of the format here: http://home.tiscali.nl/bigbird/Loc-syntax.htm
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Thanks for the answers, I'm pleased with them!
I looked at some LOC files and they are simple, basically they only contain the names of the caches and the coordinates. And they are offered to anyone, not only premium geocaching.com members. By the way, GPSBabel can convert anything (including LOC files) into GPX files (or anything else) and it is open source software distributed under the GPL. Maybe if you ported it to the PPC you could use it as an import facility to your program.
If I understand you correctly, CacheDragon does not come with cache data preloaded in the database. If so, maybe you could make the description at handango more accurate. Currently it says "CacheDragon is a sophisticated GPS mapping and location database". But the data are not there, so it is not a database. It is database management software.
Keep up the good work!
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Also, I don't quite understand: does the software come with a cache database or it only imports files that I get from geocaching.com? If it comes with a cache database, how recent is it? (In the trial version, the location database seemed to be empty.)
BTW I tried it with my Dell Axim with a Globalsat CF GPS and it did not work at all (exited upon getting a fix, did not appear in the tasks list, etc.), so I quickly deleted it. But if these problems will be corrected, I would buy it if you have a decent upgrade policy, e.g. free upgrades for one year or something like that
Does it import *.loc files, too?
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What is the upgrade policy for CacheDragon?
New PocketPC GPS software package: CacheDragon
in GPS technology and devices
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And one more feature suggestion: when entering new coordinates (e.g. the next cache of a multicache series or the suggested parking spot), make it possible to change between the commonly used coordinate formats directly from the entry screen. Also, move the two coordinates on two separate entry fields (better yet, 2x2 fields for the MinDec format and 2x3 fields for the DMS format). In the current implementation, the last few digits of the longitude cannot be seen.