New Program - GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife)

Discussion about software such as GSAK, OziExplorer etc, as well as all things hardware, GPSrs, laptops, PDAs, paperless caching, cables etc
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ClydeE
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Post by ClydeE » 09 December 03 7:11 pm

riblit wrote:[Clyde, could you do something like Watcher does and look for a 'found it' in the log entry. Ok, it's only going to catch it if the found log is in the current GPX file but at least it will catch it and should be reasonably resistant to gc.com changes.
No problems.

Will have to wait until 1.01 though.

No bug reports (keeping my fingers crossed) in beta 6 so far. Hopefully I can release 1.00 final in the next couple of days - then I can start on some new stuff :D

zijerfex
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Post by zijerfex » 10 December 03 9:35 am

Hi ClydE

Just want to say that GSAK is the most comprehensive app around and I now use it exlusively. There is just one thing that bugs me about the generated html files. I don't know if I'm the only one that experiences this or not, but when I view them on my Palm m515, the processor seems to have quite a bit of difficulty in processing the pagesresulting in very slow viewing and (particularly) scrolling. I didn't experience this with the files from GPX Spinner which I don't use anymore since GSAK is the superior by far.

I have tried adjusting the settings in iSiloX for transforming them to Palm format but have not had much success. Is it something to do with the amount of information in the files or the coding? Or is it something in my settings? Can anyone shed some light on this or am I the only one who has it? I found it a bit frustrating on my caching outing yesterday when I just wanted to scroll to the bottom of the page to find out the next nearest cache.

Any comment/suggestions welcome
ZijerPhil

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riblit
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Post by riblit » 10 December 03 10:10 am

ZijerPhil wonders:
I have tried adjusting the settings in iSiloX for transforming them to Palm format but have not had much success.
I use a Tungsten T with iSilo, scrolling is quite fast. I use the toolbar icon for iSilox clipper version 4 to do the conversion, depth 3, no offsite links, no unresolved detail.
GSAK stores the pages in a folder that is shared on my local web server. I just point the browser there and push the conversion button.

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The Ginger Loon
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Post by The Ginger Loon » 10 December 03 11:04 am

riblit wrote: I use a Tungsten T with iSilo, scrolling is quite fast. I use the toolbar icon for iSilox clipper version 4 to do the conversion, depth 3, no offsite links, no unresolved detail.
GSAK stores the pages in a folder that is shared on my local web server. I just point the browser there and push the conversion button.
The toolbar icon for iSiloX seems to be the way to go. I'm using iSiloX 3.5 with a Palm Vx and have no probs. Before I was using the iSiloX console and it resulted in pages that were as slow as a wet week.

Thanks Riblit for your help in setting me right with this the other week... :D
Last edited by The Ginger Loon on 11 December 03 10:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

ClydeE
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Post by ClydeE » 10 December 03 11:36 am

riblit wrote:I use a Tungsten T with iSilo, scrolling is quite fast. I use the toolbar icon for iSilox clipper version 4 to do the conversion, depth 3, no offsite links, no unresolved detail
Thanks Riblit.

Not owning (or even having access to a palm) I am quite lost here.

I hope this helps ZijerPhil

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riblit
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Post by riblit » 10 December 03 12:46 pm

The Loon wrote:
I'm using iSiloX 3.5 with a Palm Vx and have no probs
Get iSilox 4 from the iSilo web site, it has a couple of bug fixes and will work with iSilo 3.x

I was having problems with files that were 'sticking' at 99% on load with iSilox 3.whatever, a quick email to the writer brought the suggestion to try version 4 of the clipper. The problems have all gone away.

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Placed by Names

Post by ClydeE » 10 December 03 10:53 pm

One of the issues I am looking at for GSAK 1.01 is the “placed byÂâ€

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riblit
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Post by riblit » 10 December 03 11:07 pm

The owner is the gc.com login name, it should suffice in most cases. The only times I have seen differences, is when the owner becomes a team for the purposes of placing a cache, or changes the capitalisation.
You could sort on owner and show 'Placed By' in the html pages if it is different - not just a capitalisation change.

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Post by EcoTeam » 10 December 03 11:23 pm

zijerfex wrote:Hi ClydE

Just want to say that GSAK is the most comprehensive app around and I now use it exlusively. There is just one thing that bugs me about the generated html files. I don't know if I'm the only one that experiences this or not, but when I view them on my Palm m515, the processor seems to have quite a bit of difficulty in processing the pagesresulting in very slow viewing and (particularly) scrolling. I didn't experience this with the files from GPX Spinner which I don't use anymore since GSAK is the superior by far.

I have tried adjusting the settings in iSiloX for transforming them to Palm format but have not had much success. Is it something to do with the amount of information in the files or the coding? Or is it something in my settings? Can anyone shed some light on this or am I the only one who has it? I found it a bit frustrating on my caching outing yesterday when I just wanted to scroll to the bottom of the page to find out the next nearest cache.

Any comment/suggestions welcome
ZijerPhil
I have a similar problem with slow scrolling on my Palm IIIXE, but it still works, just a bit slow at times. In general the Geo2Ozi files (haven't upgraded to GSAK yet) are slower than the ones produced by GPXspinner

Haven't upgraded my iSilo for a while though.

EcoDave :)

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riblit
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Post by riblit » 11 December 03 10:15 am

EcoDave Wrote:
I have a similar problem with slow scrolling on my Palm IIIXE, but it still works, just a bit slow at times. In general the Geo2Ozi files (haven't upgraded to GSAK yet) are slower than the ones produced by GPXspinner
There are a number of differences in the html produced by the two programs. I think what it really gets down to is what iSilo does with the html.
GPXSpinner pages are basically the contents of the table with a html header and footer added. This is OK in cases there there is no background image for the page. In a situation where the page has a background the line
<Body Background="http://img.groundspeak.com/user/background_image.jpg">
is in the html and causes the image to be tiled under the text, making it difficult to read on a computer.

GSAK keeps the table structure so the offending image remains as a border, outside the table.

Other differences are in the difficulity and terrain. GSAK uses stars, GPXSpinner uses numbers. The images have to be moved when scrolling the page, this could be an issue on the slower Palm devices.

I could suggest that Clyde insert a link near the top of each page to jump to the nearest caches list on that page. That would get aound the issue for those just wanting to see the nearest caches.

Also have an option to kill the javascript on the hints page as iSilo has no concept of it and the back button works.

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Post by ClydeE » 11 December 03 11:52 am

riblit wrote:I could suggest that Clyde insert a link near the top of each page to jump to the nearest caches list on that page. That would get aound the issue for those just wanting to see the nearest caches.
No problem.

Any preference exactly where this link should display?

Though eventually, I will allow templates so you can set up your own layout

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riblit
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Post by riblit » 11 December 03 12:07 pm

ClydeE wrote:
Any preference exactly where this link should display?
How about Nearest caches?

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Post by ClydeE » 11 December 03 12:33 pm

riblit wrote:ClydeE wrote:
Any preference exactly where this link should display?
How about Nearest caches?
Sorry, I don't understand.

Your original suggestion, requested that this link should be "NEAR the top of each page"

I am asking where exactly? "How about Nearest Caches?" does not seem consistent with this question.

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riblit
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Post by riblit » 11 December 03 2:43 pm

Sorry, Misread the question.
How about continuing the Current at <date> line ... for latest info, here for nearest caches.

That way anyone the wants the nearest cache list can click on the link, others can scroll and read the cache description etc.

ClydeE
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1.00 Final

Post by ClydeE » 12 December 03 1:17 pm

GSAK 1.00 final is now ready for download.

I have trouble believing there is any such thing as “bug free” software, but the bug reports for GSAK Beta 6 have come to a stop. I feel this version has had enough testing to warrant the final release. If any problems do pop up in the final release I will just do a Micro$oft and release a “service pack”.

If you have been putting off trying the program because you don’t like Beta software then now is the time to give it a go.

Please note that this program is FAR from finished. Thanks to your feed back I have enough to go on with for quite some time. I also have some pet features of my own that I would like to add.

I have already started work on version 1.01 and hope to add these new features in a series of minor updates. The most common requested (and easiest) features will be added first. There is also a little surprise in 1.01 I hope you will all like.

This final release only has a few minor changes to Beta 6 but I would encourage anyone with an earlier version to update. Changes include:

Minor enhancements and changes to the GUI interface.
Minor changes to the offline HTML pages.
Minor changes to the help file.
Fixed a bug where the description of a cache would be the name of a travel bug in the cache (this would only happen if the cache had a travel bug AND zero logs)

Download here http://gsak.geocaching.com.au

Cheers
Clyde

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