JMap - Just a small tool to navigate through the world

Some thoughts about Navigation

Yes, it would be nice to have a tool to navigate through the world. This tool should provide an automatic pathfinder and of course lots of included maps. Sorry, this is not the right page, have a look at ... I don't know.

By thinking about that kind of navigation, I got an idea: What about a tool to navigate through a large image? Okay, here we are. You can use large images e. g. scans from city-maps. These images are automatically split into many small ones. And the small ones can be used to navigate. A tip on the screen and the map centers at the tipped position. Tip again and again and again. The whole map seems to be one large image, not many small images!

How to ...

How to use JMap

1. There's a java virtual machine at your Zaurus?

2. Download and install JMap

3. Create or download a map as .jpg, .png or .gif

4. Convert the map into JMap-format

5. Install the map

6. Restart JMap

7. You can now navigate through the world by tipping into the map. The map is centered at the tipping-position and so on. In the zoom-menu you can switch to the overview and back to the detailed view.

How to create a map

1. Download maptozaurus.convert to your Linux-desktop. Thanx to Michael Weidel for modifying my maptozaurus-script. It is now working much faster!

2. Check that it can be executed (chmod u+x maptozaurus.convert)

3. Check if you have installed the ImageMagick-package

4. Take a "paper-"map and put it onto your scanner. Or: Download an image to be used as map

5. Run maptozaurus IMAGEFILE

6. Copy the created IMAGEFILE.ipk to your Z and install the image

7. Restart JMap

What about my Windows-desktop?

Dirk Forst has developped a conversion program for windows. It can be downloaded here. Thanx.

Screenshots

Due to copyright reasons, no maps are shown in the screenshots section. Sorry!

This is JMap Inner city of Koblenz
Germany (overview) 		Inner city of Koblenz (detail)
Around Koblenz (overview) Around Koblenz (detail) The maps in my pocket

Changelog

20030109: there was an error in the conversion-script and in JMap

20030108: speed up for maptozaurus.convert-script, support for .jpg, .gif (new) and .png (new)

20021218: the first release

What else?

JMap is published under the GPL. There's no warranty that you won't get lost when you are using JMap.

The source-code can be obtained here.

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Christian Raskob