Marble/MeeGo

From KDE TechBase

Developed by Daniel Marth during Google Summer of Code 2011. User interface ideas (under development): On startup a "home screen" is shown that lines up a couple of possible activities. Each activity is represented by its name and an icon, aligned in a grid. Selecting any activity brings the user to the main screen. The main screen adjusts itself to the chosen activity and provides a way to go back to the home screen and related activities. Most activities display a map (MarbleWidget) as the main widget, but that's not always the case (e.g. during configuration).

Activities

Planned activities are as follows:

  • Virtual Globe
    • Activates spherical projection, a satellite map.
    • Easy way to switch to other map themes.
    • Easy way to enable wikipedia and photo plugin.
    • Distance measuring should be possible.
  • Routing
    • route planning for motorcar, bike, pedestrian
    • OSM map, merkator projection.
    • Related activities: Guidance
  • Guidance
    • Voice guidance during a journey.
    • Precedence: Known route.
    • OSM map, merkator projection.
    • Related activities: Drive, Cycle, Walk
  • Search
    • Textual search for cities, addresses, POIs, ...
    • Easy way to enable wikipedia and photo plugin
    • Related activities: Bookmarks, Around Me
  • Bookmarks
    • Access to the bookmarks
    • Related activities: Search, Around Me
  • Around Me
    • Activates merkator projection, OSM map, GPS.
    • Searches for POIs and displays them. Search area: Around GPS position if known, current viewport otherwise
    • Optional category filtering.
    • Easy way to enable wikipedia and photo plugin
    • Related activities: Search, Bookmarks
  • Weather
    • Activates spherical projection, a satellite map and the weather plugin
  • Tracking
    • Activates merkator projection, OSM map, GPS
    • GPS track is automatically recorded.
  • Geocaching
    • Activates merkator projection and OSM map
    • Activates GPS and the opencaching plugin.
    • Easy way to enable wikipedia and photo plugin
    • Related activities: Biking, Walking
  • Friends
    • Activates the open desktop plugin (needs to be extended: at least login and).
    • Possibly other future plugins (e.g. google latitude)
  • Download
    • Download of map tiles, offline maps, voice guidance speakers etc for offline usage
  • Configuration
    • Tweak various settings

Roadmap

Marble Touch for MeeGo 1.3, to be released with KDE 4.8. Supported activities are

  • Virtual Globe
  • Search
  • Routing
  • Tracking
  • Weather
  • Friends
  • Space View

The following features will be missing in the very first release 1.3.0:

  • Bookmark access (general)
  • Legend display
  • Download of offline maps, speakers
  • Guidance mode

Timeline

Releases will be aligned with the KDE release schedule. Minor releases will be feature releases, however. The missing features from above will be added gradually in these releases.

  • 2012-01-25: Marble Touch 1.3.0
  • 2012-03-06: Marble Touch 1.3.1
  • 2012-04-03: Marble Touch 1.3.2
  • 2012-05-01: Marble Touch 1.3.3
  • 2012-06-05: Marble Touch 1.3.4