+TheAprilFools Posted August 29, 2005 Posted August 29, 2005 I know this has been asked for before but I figured I would bring it up again. I was preparing for a road trip where I was going to drive 1000 miles cross country and was getting my PQ's setup so I could map out the caches along the trip. As I set up each PQ I would run the preview and download an average 10 pages of it into ExpertGPS so I could see the coverage I was getting, and seeing gaps or lots of overlap I would adjust it and repeat the procedure until I was happy with it. Of course it occurred to me that this is not a very efficient way to do this as I can only imagine the work the server was doing to generate the data every time I pressed the "Next" link to get those next 20 cache listings. I would think that it would make every ones life easier if there was a link in the PQ pages where we could download all the caches in a PQ as a LOC file only. I suppose there could be some limit number of times a day a member could to this but if they are trying to fine tune there PQ's it may take several attempts before they get it right. Now I expect to see lots of popcorn and violins for bringing this up again, so I have mentally prepared myself for it. Thanks for your attention.
+Thrak Posted August 29, 2005 Posted August 29, 2005 Now I expect to see lots of popcorn and violins for bringing this up again, so I have mentally prepared myself for it. Thanks for your attention. Just for you.
+Markwell Posted August 29, 2005 Posted August 29, 2005 It has been mentioned before, but I think it's a splendid idea. I'd take it further though and make it so that you could "on demand" your PQ and it would ONLY an EXTREMELY limited LOC file - GPxxxx and the given coordinates (only giving coordinates for MO caches to premium members, etc., blah, blah). We could even come up with a new extension. PQL (for pocket query limited). Taking it further... What about THEN having the ability for a user to manipulate that PQL file in GSAK or some other offline data, and produce a single PQL file. Then allow the premium members to upload that PQL file, and produce an ACTUAL pocket query with GPX of those files (max'ing at 500 of course). That would certainly solve the "caches along a route" problem. Of course, the site would have to come up with some way of limiting the usage so that people couldn't just grab the whole site.
+reg3 Posted August 29, 2005 Posted August 29, 2005 We went on a 5000 mile trip out west this year, so I understand exactly why you are asking. I started out by gettting PQ's from major areas along our route and adding them to my MapPoint map in an attempt to choose caches that would work in an arc filter for GSAK. I realized that getting an updated PQ right before the trip for all areas would take several days because of the 5/day limit. I finally used a diffrent way to get complete up-to-date data the morning of the trip. It may have been taxing to the servers, but the real work was done during the week when traffic seems to be less. I moved the GC map along our route and "identified" clusters of caches spaced far enough apart where the wife and kids would be ready to stretch. I looked at each cache and if it fit my needs, I placed it on my watchlist. I worked around the route and came up with around 200 possibilities. A PQ can be set up with just items on your watchlist. Updated PQ's can even be obtained while on the road to warn of problems like missing containers. We only found 67 of the 200 caches during our two-week vacation, but it was fun. The two problems with this method are all of the emails you get, and then eliminating the caches from your watchlist. They can only be dropped on at a time. This may not be the best method, but it worked for us.
+The Wet Coast Explorers Posted August 29, 2005 Posted August 29, 2005 How about modifying the PQ system to allow you to get a PQ for caches on a bookmark list? This would allow you to create your own list of caches along a route and keep them up to date. Don't think this would be any more server intensive than getting a PQ of all the caches on your watchlist. People can share their bookmarks too, so someone could, in theory, create an I5 bookmark list and then share that with others.
+Markwell Posted August 30, 2005 Posted August 30, 2005 I know that in the past Jeremy has said that in the future, we would be able to PQ off of a bookmark list. It just isn't present at present.
+TheAprilFools Posted August 30, 2005 Author Posted August 30, 2005 It has been mentioned before, but I think it's a splendid idea. I'd take it further though and make it so that you could "on demand" your PQ and it would ONLY an EXTREMELY limited LOC file - GPxxxx and the given coordinates (only giving coordinates for MO caches to premium members, etc., blah, blah). I suggested the LOC file because it already is very limited, it contains the ID, name, coords and URL. The url is not really nessesary but if you have the ID its easy to derive, so I dont think inventing another format would help much. But the idea of being able to create a PQ from a uploaded GPX or LOC file is a great one, as long as you have the list of waypoints in the first place. That would make the ability to do an on-demand download of a LOC file from a PQ very very useful.
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