#97 Custom waypoint icons

[tribun]

Please support custom waypoint icons. F.e. use all icons in a special folder. Maybe you can publish a list of supported filenames, so any user can create his own icon set.

I would be very pleased, if the export mechanism for tracks and waypoints would support icons (<sym>-tag in a GPX-file) located on a webserver.

If you need a new/different set of icons please tell me the size an format of an icon and send me a list of supported icon-names. Then I will create a set for free usage.

[Guilhem BONNEFILLE]

Icon set is not yet modular in viking. Currently, it is built in the binary. I imagine we have to evolved to something more dynamic, like GTK offers for theming. Any help are welcome.

Current icon set is based on garmin icon names (I think). Perhaps a good solution is to add a new configuration file where user is able to declare icon tags and the corresponding file name.

Concerning alternatives, I imagine to reuse icon set provided for OpenStreetMap.

Here are my current notes about this topic
https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/viking/index.php?title=User:Guyou#Icons

[tribun]

Yes, a dynamic (custom) icon management, that was my demand. This would be very helpful, because any export of GPX and KML/KMZ-files has to be edited currently. Your idea with a confiiguration file and theming is very interesting. It's right, configuration with parameter sets with predefined standard values is missing, too.

Sorry, I'm no programmer, I only use VIKING for creating GPX with tracks. Wanna help, but can't. :) Hope someone of your programmers likes this topic and makes custom icons possible.

[Rob Norris]

You can assign an image to the waypoint (typically "png", "jpeg", "gif", "tiff" and "xpm" types are supported by the underlying system).
However this won't be saved in a GPX file, so only of use within Viking itself.

Note that (from my understanding of the GPX spec), that the <sym> tag is just plain text only.
URL references have to be via <link> tags - see http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1/#type_wptType
Whereas KML icons can have links - see http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kmlreference.html#link
Link tags are currently not supported in Viking.

This reminds me - I have a slightly improved symbol set which I will promote into the mainline code soon:
http://github.com/rnorris/viking/tree/WaypointSymbolImprovements

This doesn't preclude anyone else enhancing Viking to use dynamic icon sets and/or URL references for them.

[Rob Norris]

Oops actually VIking does 'support' <link> tags and images, but I think the link will only be a direct file path - so no good for trying to use it with a webserver.

I've never tried opening such a GPX with images with any other program - so I don't know how correct Viking's implementation is. Maybe I'll try it with Google Earth later on.

#Why can't SF have an edit comment feature :(

[tribun]

My main intention was to customize VIKING. I would like a custom icon set to work with in VIKING. It's right, the GPX-specs only allow plain text in the <sym>-tag. Maybe the supported icon names (for the sym-tag) should match the Garmin MapSource icons (for compatibility)

http://freegeographytools.com/2008/garmin-gps-unit-waypoint-icons-table

http://home.online.no/~sigurdhu/MapSource-text.htm

But it is a good idea to store the icons in a folder of VIKING and not in the source code. Maybe a configuration file helps to organize, which folder VIKING should use for the waypoint icons. The names of the symbols may be stored in the <sym>-Tag (GARMIN compatible) when exporting a track to a GPX-file. As long as the (custom) waypoint-graphics are stored in the same directory as the GPX-file, they can be distributed and should be displayed in a user's software respecting the GPX-specs..

We use also VIKING to make screenshots of the tracks with the waypoint-symbols. Currently we make the screenshots without displaying the waypoints and add the symbols in a second step manually to the images.

My second intention for this thread was to optimize the workflow for GPX-files. We make complex custom GPX-files and store them on our server. So we use the <link>-tag of the GPX-specs for the waypoint-symbols (NOT the waypoint-images, which is a different subject). Some software uses the <link>-tag only for waypoint-images, our software (for our needs only) can use it for symbols.

Currently we must edit every GPX written by VIKING.

So we would be very pleased if VIKING will support the whole GPX-specs V 1.1 some day. Yes, we like VIKING very much. Making tracks with VIKING is fun, no software does it better. Thanks a lot.