Marble/MeeGo

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
• Guidance mode
• Installation of offline maps
• Installation voice navigation speakers
• Installation of additional map themes

The following features are missing in the very first release 1.3.1:

• Bookmark access (general)
• Legend display
• Download map regions (route regions in 1.3.2)

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.

• 2012-02-12: Marble Touch 1.3.2
• 2012-03-06: Marble Touch 1.3.3
• 2012-04-03: Marble Touch 1.3.4
• 2012-05-01: Marble Touch 1.3.5
• 2012-06-05: Marble Touch 1.3.6

TODO List

Description	Type	Target	Comments
Street Map Theme Preference	Polishing	1.3.3	Correctly update after installations (possibly need to forward countChanged signal)
Use Harmattan colors	Polishing	1.3.3	Replace: Blue and gray in Navigation activity, lightsteelblue in hightlights
Fix float item borders	Polishing	1.3.3	There are pixel errors
Improve whitespace usage in Search/Routing	Polishing	1.3.3	Use more space for the map whenever possible (e.g. no search result, no turn directions)
Consistent margins and spacing	Polishing	1.3.x	Currently often hard-coded or missing
Improve map matching	Feature	1.3.x	No turn instructions if direction and distance indicate that we're not following the route. Detect that a U-turn is needed and announce it.
Reverse geocoding for via points	Feature	1.3.x	Use that instead of "Point in map"
Remove via points	Feature	1.3.x	Currently deactivated as triggering it from the ViaPointEditor delegate affects the delegate itself (deletes it) which results in a segfault for some reason
Concatenated voice commands	Feature	1.3.x	Test whether concatenated commands (turn distance) work.
Test whether monav is installed	Feature	1.3.x	Recommend users to install monav when it's not there
Add missing activity icons	Polishing	1.3.x	Routing, Tracking and Navigation still use generic icons
QML Tile Creation Progress Item	Polishing	1.3.x	QWidget version instantiated by MarbleMap, looks strange and is portrait only
Search result icons	Feature	1.3.x	Add an image provider for placemark icons and use it in search results
Last target as route destination	Feature	1.3.x	Keep a model of last route targets and let the user choose from it when editing via points
Improve Offline Routing Data UI	Polishing	1.3.x	Right now, it's a very long list with lots of small items to pick. Maybe add this alphabetical scroll slider (like in the contacts app) or use a drill-down menu like in Nokia Maps? Continent -> Country ( -> Province or All)