larsl

Same here. I suggest that the OP makes it a PDF instead of using a secret format (I can open it in OpenOffice.org, but the text is a bit jumbled).

I use Quantum GIS. As a student I have free access to lots of digital maps from the Swedish Land Survey. I download LOC files, load them in QGIS, and plan the route from the map.

Please don't write "Under a stone" in the hint.

I never log a DNF unless I've really looked in every hole and under every stone I can see at the coordinates. It happens quite often that I go out for a quick cache hunt, lift a few stones, then stop because I'm bored or because it's getting dark or because I'm hungry or some other reason, and then come back a few days/weeks later and continue. Unless I have something interesting to say I usually don't even log a note until I've either found the cache or given up completely.

Short answer: you can't. But if you're locations are original enough it's probably very unlikely that someone else is going to place a cache there while you're planning your multi and getting everything ready (unless you need several years to do it).

Download and install GPSBabel (http://www.gpsbabel.org) and run the following command: gpsbabel -t -i garmin -o gpx /dev/ttyS0 mytracks.gpx Replace /dev/ttyS0 with the name of the serial port your eTrex is connected to (on GNU/Linux this looks like /dev/ttyS0 or /dev/ttyS1, on Windows it will be COM1 or COM2). This will give you a GPX file called mytracks.gpx with all the tracks that you have saved on your device, and the current track (called ACTIVE LOG). This file can be loaded in any program that supports GPX files.

(obsolete answer - see robertlipe's post instead)

I don't know if you _can_, I've never tried - but it seems like a very silly thing to do, if you're not deliberately trying to inflate your stats. It's not like you have to "find" the cache - if you placed it you know exactly where it is. For events it may be different, but I still don't think that I would log an event that I had arranged (although I don't think that I'd ever arrange an event either). I'm assuming that by "log" you mean "log as found" and not just "post a note".

Oh good, so you guys could read it ok! I actually just looked at the source, but now I've tried to load it in QGIS and it works. One odd thing though: the second track (named "JEEP MAGAZINE") ends with a separate trackpoint at the coordinates 0.00, 0.00. I don't know if this is intended, if it's a human mistake, or if it's a bug in the software you used to write it.

There's also a command line program called 'rot' that comes with the "silly quote" program 'fortune', which is installed by default in most Linux distributions. I use it all the time to decode the hints, it's faster to cut-and-paste to a terminal window than to reload the whole webpage.

As an example, the GPX link that myjeeprocks posted contains tracks.

Have you tried GPSBabel? It was created precisely to solve the problem of all mapping programs using their own format. I don't know if it handles the formats you use, but you could give it a try. By putting them inside an <rte> element, in the correct order. GPX can store routes and tracks as well as waypoints (see this page). And I think that GPX would the best interchange format, because it's easy to parse (it's XML, all you need is an XML library) it can contain tracks, routes, and waypoints in the same file it has lots of data fields for every waypoint, route, or track, and since it's XML you can add your own fields in a new namespace without breaking anything (this is what Groundspeak do with their GPX files) it's created to be an interchange format, and not just a native format for some particular software

I'd suggest that you use the GPX format (GPS eXchange). It's an open format that's supported by lots of programs and is something of a standard for GPS data, and you can use GPSBabel to convert to/from many other formats.

If I understand you correctly you want a program that displays a map where you can add markers yourself, and change the color of the markers after adding them. QGIS is free and can display maps in lots of formats (you'll have to get the data yourself though - map data usually isn't free). Next release (due september 30) should have support for adding points in a vector layer and setting the color of individual points (both features have been in the development version for some time and look pretty stable). You can also add points directly from a GPX file. The next release is supposed to include a Windows version, and there's a Windows beta here, although it's pretty old and can't load GPX files - there's a newer unofficial version here. I don't know how/if the Windows versions work, but it works pretty well on Linux.

Wouldn't this exclude most free software from using the file formats? From a quick read of the GNU GPL, the most common free software license, I get the impression that if a user is not allowed to copy, modify and redistribute a program that uses these file formats without an explicit permission, the software is no longer "free" in the sense of the GPL and thus can't be distributed at all. Of course, IANAL (I didn't even know you could "own" a file format, unless it uses some particularly clever patented algorithms for writing and reading).

It's right here. You probably read it before you downloaded a LOC file for the first time. (WARNING: Clicking the link may mean that you agree with the license - it says "Thank you! You have agreed to the license agreement." at the top of the page, but I'm not sure if that's because I've clicked an "I agree"-button earlier or because I just loaded the page)

Here's a link to a webpage where one of the QGIS developers keeps a Windows build of the current development version of QGIS + some external plugins, including the EXIF importer and an imagemap exporter plugin that can create clickable HTML maps: http://linux-gis.co.uk/ When you use the EXIF importer a dialog will pop up that says that it was created using trial software or something similar. This is harmless and you should just click past that window. It is there because a trial version of a tool was used to create a Windows version of the library that is used to load EXIF data. (if anyone knows of a free program that creates .LIB files from .DLL ones, or even better, if anyone knows where to find .LIB and .DLL files for libexif, please let me know) I have not tested this package in any way since I don't have Windows, but it is supposed to work. You should read the short notes on the webpage though.

I've replied to your email, but I'll add a short note here too in case someone else is interested: Yes, it's a plugin for QGIS. The plugin uses the time of the points in the tracklog and the time in the EXIF files to figure out where the photos were taken. I've planned to let it use GPS data from the EXIF file if it exists, but it's not in the code yet. QGIS and the plugin are both free software. The Windows beta package does not contain this plugin since it's what we call an "external" plugin, which is released independently of the main program. The plugin is only available as source code and has only been tested on Linux, but I may be able to get one of the QGIS Windows hackers to build a version for Windows.

I think that the manual for my eTrex mentioned at least that the receiver only woke up every fifth second in battery save mode - I'm too lazy to dig it out and confirm that though. For long hikes, which is what I use the "Battery save" mode for, I haven't noticed any loss of quality in the recorded tracks.

You can use QGIS to plot your track on the screen and save it as a pixmap (but not SVG (yet)), on its own or with background maps, if you have any. It's free software.

Yes, but on some devices the timestamps may be removed if you "save" the track on the device - Garmin eTrex does this to make the saved tracks smaller. Only the active track contains time info. A shameless plug for a QGIS plugin I'm writing that does part of what you're asking for: EXIF Importer (example of output)

Or maybe not. It's designed for operating it with your left hand, and if you hold it in your left hand your fingers can stick up on the right side, obscuring the right edge of the display. So it could make sense to move the display a bit to the left.

Quantum GIS (http://qgis.org) is a new (and at the moment very unfinished) GIS program for Linux. The latest release can not handle GPS data at all, but the current development version (and thus the next release) can load and display GPX and LOC files, and it can also display map layers in many different vector and raster formats. Editing of GPS data is in the plans for future releases, as well as transferring and importing data from and to GPS devices and other file formats (using GPSBabel). Not very interesting for geocachers right now, but it could be in the future.

If you do find a schema or specification for LOC files, please post a reply in this thread. I've written a simple parser for LOC files based on files downloaded from geocaching.com, but it would be nice to have a definite description of the format, in case there are some exotic cache types that have additional fields or attributes. A detail I found while writing the parser - the XML header says that the encoding is ISO-8859-1, but it looks more like UTF-8. Characters like å, ä, ö are encoded using two bytes.