Pocket query and GPSBabel? (and GPX Spinner)

[+HitsMan and Chris]

I recently started playing around with GPSBabel. In my ideal world, I can run a pocket query, filter it (using ARC along a route) using GPSBabel, then ready it for my PDA using GPX Spinner.

 

I tried this today and got invalid characters when trying to feed GPSBabel the GPX file I got from my Pocket Query (probably because it has HTML in it). So I have to run Spinner first, then feed my spinner.gpx to GPSBabel.

 

The downside to that is that I end up having a PDA website with tons of unfiltered waypoints I won't use. I really only care about indexing the ones that come out of the GPSBabel filter.

 

Any ideas on how to get only GPSBabel filtered waypoints on my PDA in a geocaching-friendly format with hints and everything?

[robertlipe]

If I understand your actual question, it's "Why is GPSBabel choking on my pocket query", right?

 

Without even looking at your pocket query, I'll bet you dollars to donuts it's because the stupid pocket query contains illegal data that its own XSD/DTD says it's not supposed to have. It's hands down the most frequently reported "problem" with GPSBabel, even though it's not a actually a GPSBabel problem at all. I've personally reported it to contact@geocaching.com and in these forums several times and have been resoundingly unable to get a fix produced. It affects every GPX reader.

 

If you want independent validation of this, run it through Xerces or any other validating parser. If it fails, complain to contact@geocaching.com, otherwise, I'll be all over it. If understanding the output of validating parsers isn't your gig, send me the file and I'll analyze it. But if I find the validation error I'm describing, you have to promise to be the bad guy with contact@geocaching.com just to help prove to them that I'm not making this problem up and that HUNDREDS of people - not just me - are being hosed by this. Yes, at this point, I'm willing to publicly stuff the ballot box...

[+quakemap]

please send it to me too (please zip it first) - slg@quakemap.com - I will validate and see how QuakeMap chews it up

 

http://www.quakemap.com - redefining Easy...

[+HitsMan and Chris]

Ran another PQ and didn't have any parsing issues that time. I will keep my eyes out for problems in the future and log here and at contact@geocaching.com. Thanks, guys. These tools are VERY cool

[+alexm]

quote:

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Originally posted by HitsMan and Chris:

Ran another PQ and didn't have any parsing issues that time. I will keep my eyes out for problems in the future and log here and at contact@geocaching.com. Thanks, guys. These tools are VERY cool

---

 

It's also worth mentioning that you should probably have your GPX emailed as ZIP files. Sending plain-text XML attachments seems to get muched periodically somewhere between Groundspeak and destination mailboxes.

 

For what it's worth, an improperly encoded (by Groundspeak) GPX would give an error similar to:

 

gpsbabel.exe -i gpx -f foo.gpx

GPX: XML parse error at 77: not well-formed (invalid token)

 

I'd imagine that a "muched in the mail" GPX would be quite random.

 

...

alex

[+Maeglin]

quote:

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Originally posted by robertlipe:

Without even looking at your pocket query, I'll bet you dollars to donuts it's because the stupid pocket query contains illegal data that its own XSD/DTD says it's not supposed to have. It's hands down the most frequently reported "problem" with GPSBabel, even though it's not a actually a GPSBabel problem at all.

---

Agreed. That was the cause of the only problem I've had reported with the CacheMate file converter so far, as well. I forget the cache or waypoint involved, but there was an illegal character in one of the logs that the pocket query generator apparently didn't catch and it broke the XML parser.

[+BigBirdNL]

quote:

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Originally posted by HitsMan and Chris:

In my ideal world, I can run a pocket query, filter it (using ARC along a route) using GPSBabel, then ready it for my PDA using GPX Spinner.

 

Any ideas on how to get only GPSBabel filtered waypoints on my PDA in a geocaching-friendly format with hints and everything?

---

 

Skip GPSBabel for filtering. Use Watcher of (even better :-) CacheMaps for filtering. With these you can see what you are doing. And than start GPX Spinner to generate only files that you want to see on your PDA.

 

BigBird

 

[+parkrrrr]

quote:

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Originally posted by BigBirdNL:

quote:

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Originally posted by HitsMan and Chris:

In my ideal world, I can run a pocket query, filter it (using ARC along a route) using GPSBabel, then ready it for my PDA using GPX Spinner.

---

Skip GPSBabel for filtering. Use Watcher of (even better :-) CacheMaps for filtering.

---

(emphasis mine)

 

What a great idea! Say, when will Watcher be able to do that arc filtering anyway?

 

[+BigBirdNL]

quote:

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Originally posted by Warm Fuzzies - Fuzzy:

What a great idea! Say, when will Watcher be able to do that arc filtering anyway?

---

You're right, I did not pay attention to the arc filtering thing. I don't know what arc filtering is and just assumed it is a normal filtering method. I looked through the GPSBabel readme, and still not sure what arc filtering is. Is it what GPSBabel calls Radius filtering? I will have to compare GPSBabel, Watcher and CacheMaps on these possibilities to tell if you can get the same results from each.

Thinking about it, I even more prefer CacheMaps now. The radius filtering can be done directly in CacheMaps by selecting the 'center' cache and request for an AreaMap with the wanted radius.

Advantage of CacheMaps is that you see (on a map) what you do with your caches

 

BigBird

 

[+parkrrrr]

quote:

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Originally posted by BigBirdNL:

You're right, I did not pay attention to the arc filtering thing. I'm don't know what arc filtering is and just assumed it is a normal filtering method. I looked through the GPSBabel readme, and still not sure what arc filtering is. Is it what GPSBabel calls Radius filtering?

---

Nope, it's new, and it's not yet available in public versions of GPSBabel; you'll have to look at the CVS version to see it. It allows you to filter points based on their distance from an arc, which in GIS terminology is a series of connected line segments. It's most useful in determining, say, which geocaches are within 10 miles of Interstate 80 between New York and Chicago (assuming you can get sufficient data on the locations of geocaches to actually make that query worthwhile.)

 

Another new filter that's in the CVS version of GPSBabel but not yet generally available is polygon filtering, which can locate just the points that fall within a specified polygonal region. This might be useful for determining which caches fall within a particular state park, county, or other large area.

 

[robertlipe]

Poof. Now there's a new GPSBabel beta build, including both source and windows binaries, for the masses. It includes the new poly and arc filters.