-=(GEO)=-

Rosco... I had suggested that the 'Gps Units & Software' forum be split up a while back in this thread. Unfortunately, this never got traction. Maybe it's time to revive it

Rosco... You're welcome About the column thing: yes, in 1.2, columns will be constrained to a minimum width. That thing will never happen again. Regards, Fabien.

I just checked the feature with GPXSonar and everything works except for the <sym>Geocache Found</sym> issue mentioned above. Since the app doesn't take into account the 'archived' / 'disabled' attributes (yet), there's no problem there. Regards, Fabien.

JohnnyVegas... Please, take a look at the docs If you want me to help you, please email me the files that I asked for. Regards, Fabien.

M_M_Minidog... Ok, I hope that you will finally see the light after you read this: HOW TO: Use Silent Mode Setup to Deploy ActiveSync I'll even include the summary to make it easy for you: SUMMARY "You can use Microsoft ActiveSync to synchronize data between your desktop computer and your mobile device (either your laptop or your Microsoft Pocket PC device). If you are a system administrator, you can use the Silent Mode Setup feature to rapidly deploy ActiveSync across a large organization. This step-by-step article describes how to use ActiveSync Silent Mode Setup to install ActiveSync." Now, why would the system administrator have to do all that if ActiveSync were already on the target systems? Hummm? I'll spell it out for you: on any given SKU of Windows (non-OEM versions, i.e: not DELL, not Gateway, or other custom images...), ActiveSync IS NOT PRESENT! Whatever. You believe what you want to believe... I think that horse is dead now.

JohnnyVegas... Ok. Please do me a favor and zip up and email me your gpxsonar.dat as well as your gpx file so that I can reproduce your problem. Please send the file at fabien_royer@hotnospammail.com. Then try this: make a backup copy of gpxsonar.dat then delete it. Start GpxSonar and load your gpx file. You may also want to perform a soft reset of your PDA if the last step fails, then retry. Let me know how that goes. Regards, Fabien.

M_M_Minidog I'm afraid you're grossly mistaken. Synch'ing a PPC with any MSFT OS requires ActiveSync which is NOT built into the OS. Instead, it's a separate free download from the Microsoft Download Center: Mobile Devices On the PPC side of things, the ActiveSync client program is also a separate program shipping along with the OS but is definitely NOT built into it. This is insane! Do you realize what kind of antitrust lawsuits Microsoft would be facing if they did what you suggested? Not a conspiracy theory? You're certainly planting a seed for it. Instead, you should realize that buggy software is a fact of life and that Palm is not immune to it.

Eagle Dad... Nope. The package that you're downloading contains a lot more stuff than what's actually needed to run .Net apps on the PPC. Only about 3 megs should make it to your PPC. -Fabien.

Eagle Dad... Things evolve... Here's the direct link to the .Net CF SP2. .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2 Redistributable For future reference, check that page: Microsoft Download Center: Mobile Devices Regards, Fabien

Eagle Dad ... You may want to give a try to this application: PocketCache Regards, Fabien.

robertlipe... Thanks for the clarification. The scenario that I'm considering has some overlap with yours but is more about fully automating the logging of caches based on notes already taken in the field with GpxSonar. I have in mind to write a PPC client capable of POSTing to GC.com directly (w/o a PC client). -Fabien.

robertlipe... I agree with you that the proper web service may take a while to show up and that a hack is better than nothing in the meantime. Just curious, are you throttling your "cache logger" to be 'nice' on the site or is there another reason? Would you care to share your code? There's little sense in re-inventing that wheel even though I have all the necessary building blocks to make it happen. -Fabien

robertlipe... Yup. But kludgy solutions are just that. Life is much better for all involved when the solution is designed properly

Technojunkie... No, you haven't missed anything This question was just asked in this thread. You'll find my answer there. You're welcome.

GeoWorms... Cool! Try GpxSonar. Some people already have compiled this information. You just need to dig deeper if you have not found it using the search feature of the forums. As to pinning such a FAQ at the top of this forum, yup, that's the right thing to do. Regards, Fabien.

sbell111... This is exactly with this goal in mind that I wrote GpxSonar. The trouble is that GC.com does not have a 'standard' backend ready for this. As soon as Jeremy has the proper web service online to support logging caches from 3rd party apps, GpxSonar will do it. Regards, Fabien.

Rosco Bookbinder... Thanks for the pointer! Great utility! Fabien.

CacheCreatures... I've got the same version of Mapopolis and I've been experiencing the same problem. The only workaround that has worked for me was to rename the unwanted .mlp files to .mlp_ (any character will do). The trouble is that it needs to be done from the PC since the file extensions are not visible in the PPC File Explorer. I'm thinking that this could make for a handy little utility

CacheCreatures... Yes, I've had a few reports of this problem and there's an easy fix for it. There's no need to Hard/Soft reset your PDA to get out of this situation. The problem is caused by the columns in the grid being all 'collapsed' to the left of the screen, down to nothing. To fix the problem, you just need to carefully expand the width of the columns by dragging them back to their normal size. In v1.2, I'll add a way to recover from this easily. At this point, it seems that this problem occurs because of a 'user error' of some kind involving 'rubbing' (?) of the touch screen of the PDA. The latest current version is v1.1 R(elease). You should run that one instead. Actually, there is: File->Help in GpxSonar lists the historical changes in the app (unless you've replaced the default help with the online help). I hope this helps. Regards, Fabien.

There's enough stuff in this thread to keep me busy working on v1.2 for a while. I'm planning on closing this thread by tomorrow night. So if you have things to add, please do it now. Thanks to all for your input. Regards, Fabien.

Genoist... That works

No problem. For the record: I love America as much as I love France. Having spent a 3rd of my life here in the US (12 years now), I've learned to appreciate it deeply. In many ways, I like living in the US a lot more than living in France. But that's it. Having lived in 6 different countries, I can assure you that the 'best' one is only in the eye of the beholder. Peace. Fabien.

Being French myself, such generalizations make me puke. You can bash the French government all you want, I couldn't care less. Just don't lump all things 'French' together. By making blanket statements like these, you only demonstrate your ignorance. Really? Did you expect a medal instead?

For what it's worth: I've owned a MeriPlat for about 1.5 years and I find it to be a truely great unit. What I like the most about the unit: 1. the SD card capability for maps, routes and waypoints (works great with GpxSonar and my PDA ) 2. the MapSend topo maps are great and even though they could be more accurate in some instances, I still find them invaluable. 3. the unit supports auto-routing with a firmware upgrade and some new software. That's a good way to extend the life of your investment. 4. the unit locks on satellites (and holds the lock) even under thick tree cover where most regular patch antennas give up. Otherwise, when I cache I don't have much use for most of the sensors of the Platinum (barometer, temperature, altitude) but I would definitely appreciate them on mountain hikes or ski runs. One thing that I never use is the electronic compass screen of the unit. I find it totally useless. Instead, I rely on my trusty lensatic compass and the bearing provided by the GPS. Overall this handheld GPSr deserves a 9/10 rating. Regards, Fabien. PS: I also have a Gecko 201 as a backup GPSr that I often use as the on-board computer for my mountain bike. It gets the job done for caching as well but that's it.

Rosco... 2 things: 1. This feature already exists in GPXSonar and while I'll improve it over time, I don't see the point of making it a stand-alone app. 2. What you're proposing in not an extension to GPXSonar in the way that I understand it, but a separate executable. I guess I need to be more specific about what an 'extension' means here. An 'extension' for GPXSonar could be a script written in some interpreted language or a module such as a .DLL written in C or C++ running within the GPXSonar process. Alternative names for such extensions would be 'plug-ins' or 'snap-ins'. Such extensions would not necessarily provide their own User Interface. Instead they would augment the functionality of existing features. For example: exporting waypoints to a variety of formats, custom cache filters, serial communication with GPSrs, etc. could be implemented as extensions. The benefits of this approach are: 1. People other than myself can now write specialized 'handlers' for GPXSonar to share with the community. This also means that I become more scalable as a developer. 2. If the interface between the application hosting the extensions (GPXSonar in this case) and the extensions themselves is simple and if the code of the extensions is publicly available then other GeoCaching apps can reuse the same framework and (most of) the functionality of the extensions. 3. With this modular approach to application extensions, it becomes possible to strip unused features from the app. For instance, you could keep the extensions exporting the data that you care about, removing all of the others. Note: If extensions are implemented using an interpreted language such as Python or Perl, etc., extensions become extremely portable and can leverage a wealth of libraries freely available on the internet. I hope that this clarifies things a bit. Regards, Fabien.