robertlipe

Since I'm on the developers list for GPX, I know the answer to this will be "what does saxcount say about the file?" When the GPX spec itself is vague, the answer always defers to what the validating parser SAXCount votes. So I created a tiny little pocket query that contained the cache in question. It hurls: (robertl) rjlinux:/tmp $ SAXCount 6659.gpx Fatal Error at file /tmp/6659.gpx, line 36, char 134 Message: Invalid character reference The character in question is indeed the one before "sorry" which appears to attempt to be an entity encoding but is "" I'm not an XML jock, so I can't tell if any pertinent standards prohibit this, but emprically, it appears that below 0x1f, the only values allowed are the whitespace brothers - 0x09, 0x0a, and 0x0d (tab/cr/nl) There are three solutions, each with a different degree of moral purity: 1) Edit the character in question of the GPX file you're trying to process and move on. This solves the problem for you for this specific run. 2) Get the poster of the log in question to edit the log in question. This solves the problem for anyone creating a GPX file with this specific cache until there are four more logs to bump this log or the number of logs is raised. You get docked karma points if you post multiple notes or no-finds to this cache just to make this one scroll away.... 3) Lobby all the authors of GPX-reading software to handle illegal input. (Hint: as the author of one of the packages in question, I can tell you this will be a non-starter.) 4) Bribe the admins of geocaching.com (maybe a "please" will suffice) to fix thsi problem upstream. Even with this, the degrees of rightness range from editing this specific log to trapping this on generation of HTML and XML to trapping it on input. In working with Geocaching.com guys on similar issues, it was a stated goal to generate output that validated successfully, so I suspect there will be little debate that there is breakage. I'll let you start the bidding with your favorite admin.

It knows how to read the files you get from geocaching.com, whether they are .loc or the new .gpx files and it knows how to write to your merdian both serially and via the flash cards. If you specify a file name instead of a serial port, GPSBabel will create a file that you can then write to your SD card. Of course, if you have the card mounted, you can write directly to the drive. It works just fine from about any OS you can imagine assuming, of course, that your OS knows how to talk to your flash writer. There are lots of Meridian users on the GPSBabel mailing lists, so if you have problems or suggestions, discuss them there. Get it free at http://gpsbabel.sourceforge.net

quote:Originally posted by embra: quote:Originally posted by robertlipe:After implementing "smart icons" on my Magellan, I've grown quite fond of it when caching. Robert, that term caught my attention; what do you mean by that? My meridian's icons seem kinda dumb with Spinner... If you start with a file that has the Groundspeak geocaching extensions and use GPSBabel to shoot the waypoints to your receiver, it'll make multis into a bunch of grapes (bunch of waypoints) and virtuals into binoculars (because you have to look at something). There's more that can be done with such things. I've been meaning to add an entry in the icon table for micros.

quote:You know, I've come to the conclusion that SourceForge SUCKS! I don't want to derail this into either a GPSBabel thread or a discussion on SourceForge (and the sock puppets are all too busy derailing every other thread on this board to whine about cache types they don't like) but I've just thrown some time at this problem for you guys. While I haven't gone through the complete release cycle, I think that GPSBabel tree is in good shape on all platforms. I've spun source tarballs, windows binaries, moved the README link right onto the web (thus eliminating the dependency on the SF CVS server) and spun a **beta** version of GPSBabel. Get it from http://gpsbabel.sourceforge.net . Follow-ups to the mailing lists on that page and not here, please. (Volunteers to help with web pages, doc, etc. as well as code are always welcome.)

quote:Originally posted by njload:I have 3 map regions loaded and was wondering if there is a way to remove one of them or all? I don't see anything on the menu system to allow this. Thanks 1/17/03 Clarification: this answer is oriented for the "one of them" half. I missed the "or all" which has been answered by others This question is Frequently Asked in the magellan yahoo groups. The short answer is "no". The long answer is that (up to 4) map regions are glommed into a single file by Mapsend before squirting them into the unit. You cannot erase part of that file while in the receiver. So the only way to "unload" one of them is to reload a new file that contains only the regions you're interested in. This also means if you have two regions and want to replace only one of them, you actually get to create a new file (in Mapsend) and replace (the one you want to keep + the one you want to toast) with (the one you want to keep + the new one). Yes, it's slightly annoying, but it's not too terrible. [This message was edited by robertlipe on January 17, 2003 at 08:26 AM.]

quote:Originally posted by DenaliNW: I need a way to convert the GPX file into a comma delimited file. I used to be able to convert a LOC file into one of these, by opening it in geobuddy, saving it as a CSV and then transfering all the data to S&T. Now geobuddy gives me an error on LOC files that have been converted from GPX files. Any suggestions? http://gpsbabel.sourceforge.net It's supported CSV for a long time and S&T2003 support was added just a few weeks ago.

quote:Originally posted by Markwell:The ID field is a numeric field (the last portion of each cache's url). http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=_50000_ That 50000 is translated to Hex (GCC350). Both are stored in the GPX file. While that's true today, according to Elias' recent comments, it's soon to be hex-not and instead become an insanely complicated encoding that I'll wager right now will be screwed up by a substantial number of programs. I have software (not GPSBabel, different stuff) that does naive things like if ( $cn =~ m/^GC/) { $cn =~ s/GC//; $cn = hex($cn); and it will spontaneously combust when "GCGK" (hey, we need a term to describe the rollover in a sound-byte that CNN can grasp) hits. I'll start a pool right now that the cited program won't be the only one that'll start coughing up its skull when GCGK hits. I'll bet LOTS of stuff is predicated on this being a straight hex->decimal conversion since that's what it's been so far. Curiously, I'm not motivated to actually fix my stuff yet as I keep hoping that a simpler scheme will be produced before it actually matter. P.S. I just filed a trademark on "GCGK" to describe the rollover on GC#'s after GCFFFF. I can find no prior art to it and demand a royalty of one cache placement and $.37 and the left eye of a goat every time it's used.

quote:Originally posted by Sissy-n-CR:Actually, that'd be pretty slick. Create a command to make a "tiger file" based on caches attributes, get the GIF from tiger and FTP it to a user's page. Yes, it is. I have code that does it. :-) quote:Create an anon FTP account to access only a certain directory (can that be done? Never tried it.) Call that GIF in your page and your done. Various OSes have different facilities for such things. This could even be done as a CGI web thingy, allowing users to upload their GPX (or even loc) files, computing the center of the coords, using those as the tiger lat/lon anchors and just scaling from there. I don't have access to a server that allows CGI's, but it doesn't sound that hard. quote:I spin my files, download the resuling GPX, Pluck the webpages, GPSbabel the file, In the absence of getting spinner to do this for you, yeah, you've got the basic recepie. You could even get really cute and have your .procmailrc (or whatever you use to processing incoming mail on whatever OS you use) do the submission to spinner (maybe on the receipt of the data back from spinner if they are allowing direct email submission now) AND do that programmatically upon recepit of the "GEO: files for:" message. quote:add the "#tms-marker" to it (Did I mention tiger wouldn't take the file until I added the above line?), I just checked about two dozen files that I've tigerized. None have that marker and all gave me back a .gif. Tell me more.

quote:Originally posted by Sissy-n-CR:Success on the GPSbabel download and drawing a map. Exactly what I was looking for, except a little more automation. It's probably a 2-5 line program in about any language you choose to use. But since one of those lines needs to contain the coords for the center of the map you want, and the URL to get the coords from and another needs to include instructions on how to put that tiger page on your web page somewhere, making it a general-purpose thing and providing a reasonable way to customize that would be a little icky. But since those things are probably relatively invariant for your personal use, scripting it in Perl or shell or whatever is probably trivial. Tell us what OS you use and maybe we can help. Maybe you could bribe the Spinner or GPX2HTML projects to include this. Since they already have the wpt teased apart, they could actually do this basic technique without actually using GPSBabel - tiger files are dog simple. It'd probably be a tad easier for Spinner to do since it's alread running commands on a known computer on your behalf. P.S. Yes, sourceforge was coughing up its skull earlier in the day.

quote:Originally posted by '68 Dodger:Have you ever noticed that some cachers seem to be able to find 20 to 30 caches in the same day? Something odd is going on! Are they Omnipotent? I want to be able to do that! Please tell me that it can be done! It can be done. I've broken 20 many times, but think I've gotten 30 only once. There's no real magic involved. You just drive to an area where with lots of caches you haven't found yet, get up before the sun, be sure there are fresh batteries in your lamp (maybe you pick virtuals so as not to taunt park hours that are often closed during the darkness) and start caching. Have the day planned out so you're caching and not driving back and forth. Yeah, in order to knock down that kind of numbers, you have to really be having a lot of fun at it and be committed to pretty much spending the day at it, but what can be better than spending the day doing something you enjoy?

quote:Originally posted by Sissy-n-CR:How about a feature that will link you a map, like http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapbrowse-tbl, to show the caches. http://img.Groundspeak.com/user/72057_2000.gif Armed with a little bit of wrapping logic, I already do this with GPSBabel. It goes something like this: gpsbabel -i gpx -f /tmp/nash.gpx -o tiger -F /tmp/blah Now push /tmp/blah to a web site somewhere and then suck down http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapgen?murl=${THATPLACE}${LOTSMOREOPTIONS} Could something like GPX2HTML or Spinner do this for you? Yeah. In fact, just yesterday I installed a tweak to GPSBabel to color waypoints less than 2 weeks old as green.

quote:Originally posted by Li'l Boyz Club:Actually, I don't have Delorme SA but I was going to buy it IF it had this feature. I would be considering SA 2003 if it does in fact have this feature. It does. I've used it. quote:Does SA convert it's auto-route to a route with 30 waypoints or does it convert it to a track? It sort of like a singing dog. It's impressive that it sings at all, but it really doesn't sing very well. It doesn't really know very much about the waypoint/route capabilities of the receiver in question. For example, your Meridian can handle 8 character mixed case waypoint names but the SA route generate uses only the LCD 6 byte names and then munches the first two for its own use, so it makes fairly awful names. It also doesn't know about the 30 waypoint limit in a route so you have to sort of watch it stupidly spray 42 at your unit then back up and break it into smaller/simpler routes, knowing full well that the receiver was hocking up "UNABLE" packets in response to the last 12 elements that apparently fell on the floor. It also helps to "dumb down" the starting point sometimes. For example, on a quiet night, I can hear the interstate from my house. But it generates 6 turns which, to its credit, are required, but I know how to to get to that just fine without eating into the budget of 30. I solve this by having pseudo "home" starting points conveniently parked in both northbound and southbound lanes of I-65. (And if you use the wrong one, it will take you up an exit and make you turn around.) I'll confess that I tend to use SA to generate the route and then pull them into Mapsend to "optimize" the routes a little bit to do things like to take out the waypoint at the state lines, the extras at the on-ramps, and so on. I may break it into smaller routes or coalesce them into larger routes. I'll probably give the steps sensible names while I'm there. In the end, it's better than nothing and I've found nothing that does a better job, but I'm pretty disappointed in it.

quote:Originally posted by Li'l Boyz Club:I am looking for a mapping program with which I can create an auto-route (like Microsoft Streets and Trips) then download this route to my Meridian. Has anybody done this with a mapping program or heard of it? I thought I could do this with Delorme Street Atlas, but I called them to verify and their tech support person said it could not be done. Now what? SA Deluxe 9 and SA 2003 will both do it, though the exact keystrokes are different in each. Precisely which version do you have and perhaps we can help.

quote:Originally posted by Sissy-n-CR:I'll give it a go: + Output file for Street and Trips with pushpins for different types of caches GPSBabel can read/write GPX and S&T 2003. Looking at the description that someone posted for its file format, it doesn't support different pin types. If you can describe it (or even offer examples) to me privately or on the gpsbabel-misc list, I'll make GPSBabel do it. After implementing "smart icons" on my Magellan, I've grown quite fond of it when caching. quote:+ Upload to directly to GPS, of course. GPSBabel can read your GPX files and stuff them into your Garmin, Magellan, Holux, or a variety of PDA units. So it doesn't offer everything you're looking for, but it's a key part of it. And it's free. http://gpsbabel.sourceforge.net [This message was edited by robertlipe on January 14, 2003 at 06:37 AM.]

quote:Originally posted by justincredible76:OK, I just got it so I apologize if I should know this. I'd like to upload just one state, CA. Can I do this or do I have to use the rectangular tool to select regions? ... (Or, maybe, I should make smaller regions. . .) thanks. The only way to select a region in Mapsend is with rectangles. You can have up to four in a shot, so you may have to shape things sort of funny. If you have a Meridian with SD card and additional memory, the rules are different and you can flip extra regions out with new menu options. But I think even that requires some jiggling - look for details on the magellan_meridan yahoogroup.

There is no user-controllable volume setting. Unfortunately, the very characteristics that make our GPSes waterproof make it hard to get loud beeps out of them.

Congrats, and thanx for posting it. I, too, chose XML::Twig after evaluting several of the Perl XML Parsers. Most that I looked at seemed insistent on pushing a lot of state handling and comparisons up into the caller instead of just handing us a tree that could be traversed. There were lots of options so it's not the only choice, but it seemed to be a good one when I studied the options. My only complaint was that it seemed slow.

This has been covered before, but check out http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mark.cavendish/gpscable/gpscable.html

quote:Originally posted by TeamCNJC:You can use GPSBabel to convert an SD card file to a MapSend file. Select "Magellan" as the source type, and select "MapSend" (and .trk as the file extension) as the destination type. I was just about to suggest that. Thanx. quote:Also, you can use a text editor to remove lines on the SD card between your old track and your house before you do the conversion to get rid of the line to your house. In case that sounds intimidating, it really isn't. While the file is still "raw" (i.e. straight off the flash card) it's very easy to manipulate. When you're looking at it, you'll recognize the coords for your house (don't we all?) although they're in a funny DDD.MMM.MMM * 1000 thing, you'll recognize them. The last two "big" numbers on each line is a time and a date. So when the time "jumps" substantially and the coords show up at your house is when you turned the unit back on and it reacquired a lock. Just vaporize those lines before converting them and you won't get the discontinuity thing. Garmin protocol "solves" this by making the tracklog into separate fragments. However, it also does this every time they lose lock so a typical geocaching trip can have dozens of fragments this way...

Replies coalesced. fizzymagic> I'm not sure a Sourceforge project is appropriate here; it requires a pretty coherent vision of where you're going and a well-defined app to come out the back end. If you have that, great. But I'm pretty sure that we could all benefit from seeing the scratch work of others in this regard. So while a highly focused actual project would be good to have, even just a playground for developers to share pieces and parts and discuss things that will or won't work well from experience would be handy. Would you have benefitted from the skeleton to parse these? I sure would have. If not a full-scale project, how about just some web space on the gpsbabel site and a mailing list for developers? Arrowroot> The script I've written uses PDATBDB40 -- the registration-required software I referred GPSBabel will remain unencumbered by such things. It reads (and will eventually write) files without licensing restrictions. This means it'll work on OS/X, Sun/Solaris, UnixWare or whatever. It also means that it solves a different space than what you're aiming for becuase things like conduits are out of reach. It writes boring old files that you have to manually sync to your PDA. For folks using the OSes your support, I'm sure yours will be "slicker". For folks needing to automate the output of these things on their Linux server, another tool might be more appropriate. Choice is good! Lildevil> As far as parsing the XML, I did it the hard way by writing a bunch of GPX-specific regexps. You're probably making your life considerably harder than you need to. While parsing XML manually one regex at a time is possible, it's very hard to accurately handle the full variety of legal XML. Can you parse the stuff specifically written by geocaching.com today? Sure. Are there changes that geocaching.com could make to the GPX file that would still result in legal XML but break your parser? Not to be discouraging, but bank on it. Using an establish XML Parser will greatly robustify your code against future changes on the input.

quote:Originally posted by Sissy-n-CR:So what would be the point? Watcha have in mind that would need all of the logs? Well, sometimes you can have the five most recent logs and that's just not enough to give you what you need. This is common in cases with really stinky coordinates. Maybe you're at a locationless site and you're trying to figure out if it's been logged. Maybe you're studying a locationless cache and would like to put a pushpin in a map (via gpsbabel, of course) for every Covered Bridge so you can plan a trip to see them. (Don't laugh, my father-in-law does that sort of stuff.) I found when working with PDA data that 25 logs was a good size compromise. I really didn't need the coords of every flagpole, but I did want more than five logs. I'd love to see more than five. If "all" is an u nreasonable number, my experience tells me that 25 is usually adequate.

quote:Originally posted by Warm Fuzzies - Fuzzy: But the XSL was developed with libxslt on Linux, and xslproc didn't complain. I'll download the latest Mozilla and see what I can see. I'm feeling like the emporer sitting here in my underoos. Mozilla 1.1 rendered the page as dogmeat. I just installed 1.3a and it churns for a minute or two and then hocks up a blank page. While I have xsltproc, it's alien to me. Can you provide an example invocation that's sure to impress us? This sounds like neat stuff, but I just can't seem to get the entry ticket.

While I can't release the half of it that writes HTML, it just occurred to me that the part of it that reads GPX is mine to do with as I wish. If there is interest, I could publish (probably on the GPSBabel site) my code that uses XML::Twig to walk the tree, building Perl arrays for caches, logs, and such. I'd have to rip it out of the other code but it's, oh, 100 lines of stuff so it's hardly massive.

quote:Originally posted by arrowroot: So I'm starting from scratch, and seeing how quickly I can develop PC interface to Palm databases. I'm most likely going to explore a Palm conduit approach. But it will be free. (DougsBrat, who wrote the Palm side of the app, will have to decide on whether he's going to charge). As a sidebar, I whipped up a module for GPSBabel for Doug's "GeocachingDB" files just a day or two ago. (Fuzzy reviewed it.) I had a few additional questions for him before I committed it, but it's in sight. I haven't heard back from Doug, but it's only been a short time. Anyone with a completely populated geocachingDB.pdb file that they'd like to donate to the cause is encouraged to send it to me for study as the examples he provided me were too contrived. Once that module is done, geocachingdb->GPX or similar combinations are within reach.

I know what you mean. I have talked to three folks developing GPX utilities in Perl in the last 48 hours and none of them can/will share their code. I'm even part of the problem; I've had GPX->HTML writers here since the first example was posted, but since I based my code on code from someone that wouldn't generally release his code, I can't release mine, either. I'll tell you what, though, if there's interest I'll let this ride in the GPSBabel infrastructure on http://gpsbabel.sourceforge.net . We can create separate lists and ride on the same web and CVS infrastructure. I'll have to think about how we distribute the human workload, but that's solvable. (Hint: I won't want to be webmaster for your project. :-) So if you or AllenLacy would like a home for a GPX utilitiy, let me know. P.S. Please try to pick better subject threads.