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Wherigo is useless unless its going to support other OSes


Insane Kangaroo

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After so many years, and we're finally to a point where many use other OSes which aren't windows only to find myself disappointed. There are cross platform toolkits out there, and yet Wherigo builder is only for windows. For something really popular, I find it meaningless unless its going to be written in a portable manner. Yes this is possible using cross platform toolkits like Qt or Wxwidgets.

 

One of the mods brought up about maintaining different projects if there were many, well there wouldn't be any hassle if Wherigo player and builder were open source and used a cross platform toolkit in the first place. The project would in fact fix issues much sooner and support linux/mac/windows.

 

There is no excuse, period. So no, I won't be buying a Colorado until I see other OSes supported. I'll stick to sending the cache data to my cellphone via SMS/Email, since its true paperless caching.

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The easy way to deal with this, over pressuring TPTB, would be to run the Wherigo Builder in a Virtual machine. There are plenty of VMs out there for Windows (Microsoft Virtual Machine), MacOS (Parallels) and Linux (Xen, VMWare, etc), or perhaps even try running this with WINE 1.0

 

Right now Wherigo is in it's initial development stages and even the Windows version isn't done yet. If Garmin and Groundspeak are going to spend $$$ in development of it, they are going to target the most common platform, which is Windows at the moment.

 

Garmin does it's part by making the Colorado a USB Mass Storage device, and you can download Wherigo cartridges,waypoints and Geocaches to the unit without using Windows. This is a far cry from the "Garmin Protocol" serial devices that required Mapsource to load 5 years ago.

 

Perhaps in the future, Garmin/Groundspeak will make the Wherigo builder a Cloud app using Ajax but for now, let them get the first draft together.

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The easy way to deal with this, over pressuring TPTB, would be to run the Wherigo Builder in a Virtual machine. There are plenty of VMs out there for Windows (Microsoft Virtual Machine), MacOS (Parallels) and Linux (Xen, VMWare, etc), or perhaps even try running this with WINE 1.0

 

Right now Wherigo is in it's initial development stages and even the Windows version isn't done yet. If Garmin and Groundspeak are going to spend $$$ in development of it, they are going to target the most common platform, which is Windows at the moment.

 

Garmin does it's part by making the Colorado a USB Mass Storage device, and you can download Wherigo cartridges,waypoints and Geocaches to the unit without using Windows. This is a far cry from the "Garmin Protocol" serial devices that required Mapsource to load 5 years ago.

 

Perhaps in the future, Garmin/Groundspeak will make the Wherigo builder a Cloud app using Ajax but for now, let them get the first draft together.

 

You just proved a point I was trying to make. Garmin done its part by making the devices USB Mass Storage Devices. Wherigo builder SHOULD have been made using Qt, WxWidgets, or SOME TOOLKIT WHICH IS CROSS PLATFORM. It is not difficult, I am a cross platform application developer, and those toolkits make it dead easy. I do some web development, but not as much as I'd like to do. Making Wherigo windows only is insulting the users.

 

Most people see others who target a single platform these days are moronic or very stupid. Usually the people who are hired to do the job are toilet paper certies or college kiddies who are ms shills.

 

I can't stress enough how EASY it is to develop a cross platform application using Qt or WxWidgets, they've a wrapper for everything you'll need. Since garmins are just a USB Mass Storage Device, well... DEAD EASY.

 

EDIT: Just as an explanation of what a cross platform toolkit would do. Write the application and works everywhere without having to write loads of code for each OS. Which is why I think the programmers behind Wherigo are... STUPID. They can gain their intelligence back by scrapping the code they've written for the GUI and rewrite it using Qt(cost per platform for non-Free use) or WxWidgets(free for non-Free use). Free, as in licensed under an open source license which complies with the license. Wx just happens to be more free, I use DialogBlocks to design the basic applications.

Edited by Insane Kangaroo
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At the risk of inflaming what is an already far too heated discussion only four posts in, I'd like to as a few questions about these toolkits, not being familiar with them. My impression is that these toolkits handle making the UIs compatible across platforms, but may not handle some other system-level functionality. Perhaps these functions could be added in by use of other external libraries, but this starts getting into an area where you have to find out whether the library has been ported to each of the target platforms as well.

 

Some libraries that would be needed specifically (off the top of my head) are for functionality like Lua compilation, interaction with online web services (for uploading cartridges), and integration with online maps (for definition of geographic zones and positioning the player in the emulator)? I don't personally know whether those libraries exist in a format that could be easily integrated; you may or may not, but the time and effort to find and integrate such libraries cannot be discounted when looking at the effort required for tools like this.

 

Also, and this is my personal opinion, I think you'd find it easier to have a rational discussion of the topic by not resorting to name-calling and insulting the developers. While they have made (or acted on) a design decision that you appear to disagree with, the tone of posts to this point is such that no real conversation on the issue is possible. Many of us have expressed a desire to see both the Builder and the Player on additional platforms (like PalmOS!). My belief is that a calm, friendly discussion of the possibilities is far more likely to bring forward the results we want than a diatribe and a call for all work to this point to be discarded.

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I'll answer each one to full extent. I don't know why people don't research, or managers don't do research before they hire people or say "this is what we will use".

 

At the risk of inflaming what is an already far too heated discussion only four posts in, I'd like to as a few questions about these toolkits, not being familiar with them. My impression is that these toolkits handle making the UIs compatible across platforms, but may not handle some other system-level functionality. Perhaps these functions could be added in by use of other external libraries, but this starts getting into an area where you have to find out whether the library has been ported to each of the target platforms as well.

 

What kind of system-level functionality would the builder need? The cross platform toolkits can handle everything down to sockets and files. Theres even no need to specify where to save config files since there are methods/(macros if using C++) to ask where to save files.

 

Some libraries that would be needed specifically (off the top of my head) are for functionality like Lua compilation, interaction with online web services (for uploading cartridges), and integration with online maps (for definition of geographic zones and positioning the player in the emulator)? I don't personally know whether those libraries exist in a format that could be easily integrated; you may or may not, but the time and effort to find and integrate such libraries cannot be discounted when looking at the effort required for tools like this.

 

When you compile a release for each platform, you still compile those for each target(OS). Lua is a cross platform language which is also open source and usable in non-free projects, works just about anywhere. Uploading to online web services depends on the webservice, SOAP, JS-RPC, XML-RPC, etc there are libraries available for most languages already.

 

Both Wx and Qt have libraries to communicate to the web from Sockets to HTTP. Personally, I use Python, so my possibilities of running in to something which I need to access which I don't have are slim. yes, you can package python programs to .exes and Apps.

 

Also, and this is my personal opinion, I think you'd find it easier to have a rational discussion of the topic by not resorting to name-calling and insulting the developers. While they have made (or acted on) a design decision that you appear to disagree with, the tone of posts to this point is such that no real conversation on the issue is possible. Many of us have expressed a desire to see both the Builder and the Player on additional platforms (like PalmOS!). My belief is that a calm, friendly discussion of the possibilities is far more likely to bring forward the results we want than a diatribe and a call for all work to this point to be discarded.

 

I've tried to be rational with MS Shills before, they won't hear anything of it because their platform is "superior" and everyone else is "just a user". There is no excuse, if Battlefield 2 can be written in Python(with a small percentage of C/C++/ and ASM for gfx hacks), a simple builder and the player can be written in Python to be cross platform. Theres no excuse for targeting a single platform, none, ziltch, nada!

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I appreciate the answers and civility. I guess the last thing I'd like to leave this discussion with is that sometimes the choice isn't left to the programmers. Sometime, as unfortunate as it is, a decision is passed down to the developers by management or marketing. I'll agree that a cross-platform decision would have been better for a large portion of the potential userbase, but I don't think it's fair to lay the blame on or insult the intelligence of the developers who worked within that confine. They may have had a say in the matter, or they may not have.

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Thanks for the feedback!

 

You hit the nail on the head. The programmers are stupid and there is absolutely no excuse for writing to just one platform. I can't even begin to explain how stupid we are. Pudding has more IQ than us knuckleheads.

 

Perhaps we'll eventually get some real brains and figure this out - that is if we can pull our heads out of our collective behinds. That is if the folks over at Microsoft (I love you guys!) let us do that. Obviously we need to go through them before we make any decisions first.

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I appreciate the answers and civility. I guess the last thing I'd like to leave this discussion with is that sometimes the choice isn't left to the programmers. Sometime, as unfortunate as it is, a decision is passed down to the developers by management or marketing. I'll agree that a cross-platform decision would have been better for a large portion of the potential userbase, but I don't think it's fair to lay the blame on or insult the intelligence of the developers who worked within that confine. They may have had a say in the matter, or they may not have.

 

They should do one of two things

 

1) release the player and builder under a open source license

or

2) release detailed documentation on everything needed for a person to start their own cross platform project(may even be open source) so the person can prove to the people who decided to target one platform only how stupid they were to do so, can the single target project, and adopt/or fork the open source project made from the detailed documentation.

 

This site and all the others are powered by the users to submit caches and work with each others, morally they owe every participant here.

Edited by Insane Kangaroo
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I'd be happy with full support for Windows Mobile. Right now only touchscreens are supported because of the way the menuing was programmed.

And only SOME touchscreens at that! I have access to many PPC devices with built-in GPS and have found only one that will actually run the Wherigo Player. The GPS reception on this device is so bad that it is nearly impossible to complete a cartridge.

 

Now Symbian devices (such as Nokia N95 and E71) are 1,000,000 times better at GPS utilization - but alas no Wherigo Player.

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