Less Paper System

[+Johnnie Stalkers]

The bad news is our Geo-vehicle got broken into and we lost the PDA. The good news, well I guess the best I can say is that they didn't get the GPS.

 

So for the time being we are back on paper. Oh PDA where art thou?

 

I despise having to hike around with a novel of cache pages so I wrote a little program to print just the data I want from my pocket query for the caches that I select. It fits about 10 caches per page, depending on the description lengths. This isn't GSAK and surely doesn't have anywhere near the functionality. But I think it may fill a niche. The real question is would anyone other than me actual use it and if so, why hasn't someone else done it yet. If there is a need I would be willing to freely share. IMHO this 'feature' could be better put to use in a more robust geo-application.

[+Yamahammer]

Sure, I'll bite. Send me my free copy of "How to use your PDA without a PDA"

 

I sometimes forget my PDA at work and I have to print dem when I git home. Pain!

 

Sorry to heah you lost yours!

 

[+TeamK-9]

If I understand correctly, your program takes pocket queries, takes the most essential data, and puts them into an even more printer friendly format?

 

Sure, I'd appreciate it. I'm a paperless cacher, but there are those occasions when I just don't want to bring the PDA.

[Team Armadillo]

I too would love a program like that.

[+Markwell]

Can you take it one step further?

 

What about saving it to some RTF or other standard format? Then it can be used in conjuntion with a PDA as well. You could take all of the necessary info and put it on an RTF, and send it to the Palm as a very compact text only document...

[+Johnnie Stalkers]

Can you take it one step further?

 

What about saving it to some RTF or other standard format?  Then it can be used in conjuntion with a PDA as well.  You could take all of the necessary info and put it on an RTF, and send it to the Palm as a very compact text only document...

It does create and save a text file each time you print. I hadn't considered a need for it other than for my own programming purposes, but I see your point. A 'save as' option is a good suggestion.

 

For those of you that would like a copy, give me a day or two to tweak the things that I want tweaked and to consider any suggestions made.

 

Thanks for the input.

 

JS

 

The data I am including FYI:

 

GC keyword, Cache name and owner, URL (double click on a cache opens webpage), coords, cache type, container type, difficulty, terrain, short description, long description, decoded hint, last find date, last finder name.

 

 

Edited June 24, 2005 by Johnnie Stalkers

[robertlipe]

GPSBabel will write to Palmdoc and to a text format that works very well for printing and an HTML that can be fed toanything that'll read web pages.

 

See http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...=0entry922952

 

Oh, and since that time, there was an option added to print logs.

[+VegasCacheHounds]

Man, that sucks that someone stole your PDA!

 

I like your solution, if I find myself PDA-less I may have to give it a try myself.

 

Whats that saying? Neccessity is the mother of invention"

[+Jamie Z]

From what you describe, GSAK (among other programs) will do exactly that.

 

If you go to the print menu of GSAK, and choose "Condensed HTML," it will print only the text of each cache page with any number of logs you choose.

 

If you get really crazy, you can condense the print, print double-sided and four pages per sheet and get about 50 cache pages per sheet of paper.

 

Jamie