Vespucci 0.8.0 Beta - Call for Testers and Translators

Hello everyone!

Vespucci is an OpenStreetMap editor for Android and we are intending to soon release version 0.8.0 as a major upgrade from the current 0.7.0. The changes for this release are:

• New Honeycomb style Action Bar user interface, even on pre-HC devices.
• New EasyEdit editing mode that unifies all previous editing modes (which are still available for now) into one mode.
• Support Undo/Redo.
• Show way direction.
• Support way reversal and deletion.
• Add JOSM preset support in tag editor, customisations can be added.
• When tracking position, the direction you’re pointing/travelling is shown.
• Export GPS tracks as GPX files.
• Transfer/Other Location shows coordinates of last location.
• Allow installing to SD card.
• Allow nothing as a background, drop Osmarender.
• Allow downloaded data to be saved as a JOSM-compatible OSC file.
• Add support for Croatian, Danish, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, and Russian languages.
• Add crash error reporting using ACRA.
• Support alternate OpenStreetMap API servers.
• Many other bug fixes and improvements.

Right now we’d like people to visit our project download page and download a beta test copy. The latest beta can be found at:

http://code.google.com/p/osmeditor4android/downloads/list

and the file will be called “Vespucci-rXXX.apk”, where XXX is 330 as I type this, but it will change to higher numbers when later test versions are built. We intend to keep this updated as often as possible.

Apart from giving the new functionality a good test, we’d like to get the various language translations as correct and complete as possible. We currently have support for many languages, of which English is the only one I would expect to be correct and complete. All the others will have issues, some languages more than others. Apart from English, the other languages we currently support are:

• Czech
• Danish
• German
• French
• Croatian
• Hungarian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Norwegian (three variants)
• Polish
• Russian

Any additions (including whole new languages!) and/or corrections would be welcome. We would prefer a ready-to-go UTF-8 encoded “strings.xml” file, but will try to accept just about anything.

The text string files can be found in the SVN trunk at:

http://code.google.com/p/osmeditor4android/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2Fres

in the various “values” folders. “values” by itself is the default (English) folder. Click on the folder, then click on “strings.xml”, then on the page that appears right-click on “view raw file” link over on the right side of the page and save the linked file.

Some strings have been marked “DO NOT TRANSLATE”. Don’t even copy them into a “strings.xml” in a language-specific folder. Just leave them out of translations.

If you’re a developer, please check out the trunk. Note that the “Sequoyah” Eclipse plugin (Eclipse Help → Install New Software) could assist editing the various files.

Thanks in advance to all our testers and translators. New contributors will be added to our list - see “Authors and licenses” at the bottom of the application Preferences. Or not, if you prefer.

Andrew Gregory, Vespucci developer

Panning is still very slow for densely mapped areas. Are there any plans on improving performance? OpenGL anyone?

OpenGL support is issue 9 in our bug tracker, which has gone nowhere since 2009. Too many more important things first.

Have you tried turning off one or more of the stats, touch tolerance shading, or anti-aliasing?

Edit: turning the map background to none has the biggest impact, but that isn’t in the Play version (0.7.0). You’d need the Beta Test version for that.

would it be possible for you to change the package name to something more meaningful than “de.blau.android”? The name is completely misleading and senseless. Also, wtf has blau.de (german mobile telco provider) to do with vespucci?

That’s what it was way before I joined the group. My understanding is that the original developer (Matt Elacchiato) worked (and maybe still does) for blau.de. He is no longer involved with the project. I would agree that it was most likely a poor decision.

The main issue with changing the package name is that it becomes a whole new application unrelated to the previous one. There’s no way to upgrade from the old to the new. If we were going to do this then I guess we’d release a final de.blau version that worked, but encouraged users to switch to the new one.

Ultimately, the decision would have to be made by the guy who has the signing certificate - Marcus Wolschon.

I personally would favour discussing with whoever is in charge of openstreetmap.org to see if we could use a package like org.openstreetmap.vespucci.

It is rather a low priority though, I mean who really looks at the package name of the apps they install? The main problem would be if blau.de decide they don’t want to be associated with Vespucci (they may not even know about Vespucci )

Agreed, it is not a high-priority issue.
It is an issue for people either looking for the data directory (“I can’t find anything named *vespucci”) or people finding this name somewhere (“wtf is this? I don’t have anything from blau.de… better delete this”).

Version 0.8 of Vespucci has been released today to GooglePlay.

Thanks to the programmers ans alle beta-testers and translators!

http://code.google.com/p/osmeditor4android/wiki/News

Thank you very much for your work with Vespucci. It has progressed a lot since I first tried it in 2010.

I think that needs “urgently” relations support. It is a very important feature and the fact that it doesn’t exist yet prevents me from using Vespucci on my tablet. Relations creation and edition is a must.