RoadMap User Manual and README

February 2009


= Introduction =

   RoadMap is an open source program that displays street maps.
   When a GPS receiver is available RoadMap can track the current location
   of the vehicle on the screen, continuously adjusting the position of the
   map; with appropriate map data, it can also identify the name of the
   current street as well as the name of the next intersection.  RoadMap
   can be used without a GPS receiver, as a static map viewer and address
   finder.

   RoadMap runs on various UNIX and Linux systems, but it's also ported to
   Windows CE, and other efforts are underway.

   RoadMap is released under the GPL (see the COPYING file).

   RoadMap currently support map data from several sources:

     - US Census Bureau (TIGER data)

       The census bureau TIGER data only covers the US and its territories.

     - OpenStreetMap

       An external tool (buildmap_osm) can be used to fetch maps from
       the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project.  More information about this
       user-supported project can be found at http://www.openstreetmap.org

     - Canadian RNF (Road Network File) maps

       The RNF files contain road data, but currently no water
       features or municipality information.

     - Digital Charts of the Words

       DCW is a set of world-wide maps produced by the US Department
       of Defense.  The DCW contains only major highways and freeways, for
       some parts of the world (mostly Europe and Japan) and their accuracy
       does not allow reliable car navigation.  These maps are also quite
       old.

   RoadMap uses a binary file format for representing maps that is
   compact enough to allow the storage of many maps on a Compact Flash or
   MultiMedia card. The map of Los Angeles county takes a little more than
   10 Mbytes of flash space. RoadMap comes with a set of tools to convert
   the US Census bureau data into its own map format.

   RoadMap has been designed to be usable on both desktop or laptop
   computers, and on much smaller PDA and embedded devices, like
   the Sharp Zaurus, the iPAQ, or the Pocket PC. 

   In its current version, RoadMap can work with any of the GTK+ 1.2,
   GTK 2.0, GPE, QT/X11 or QT/QPE graphic environments. The QT environment
   (particularly the QT/QPE version) is mostly used for the Zaurus port (but
   could probably be used with OPIE).  QT3 and QT4 are both supported.  The
   most stable environment is the GTK 2.0 one (this is the one used for
   most development).  The GPE support is and optional extension of the
   GTK 2.0 environment and is very experimental (i.e. untested).
   GTK 1.2 is still interesting because it's quite a bit more efficient
   when running on limited hardware than is GTK 2.0.

   RoadMap is also available on Windows CE (i.e. Pocket PC), built using the
   mingw32ce cross-compiler.  As gpsd does not exist on Windows, the
   Windows CE version directly listens to the GPS serial port.

   RoadMap can currently display the map around a specified street address,
   track a GPS position, and identify the current street and the next
   intersection.  Trip support is provided (waypoints, route following, and
   general landmarks).  Large sets of "Point of Interest" features also can
   be displayed on the map.

   The plan for the future is to implement some navigation features similar
   to those found in commercial car navigation systems, and to port RoadMap
   to as many environment as possible.


= Authors =

   This document, as well as RoadMap as a whole, is primarily the work
   of Pascal Martin.  Other major contributors include Steve Woodbridge,
   Ehud Shabtai, Paul Fox, and Danny Backx.  The RoadMap "forked road"
   icon was designed by fmiser from the RoadMap mailing list.


= About this Documentation =

   This documentation was written using vi (what else? :-) in the format
   supported by txt2tags. The txt2tags tool was used to produce the HTML
   version of this manual (file web/manual.html). The HTML file can be
   regenerated using the following command:

```
      txt2tags --toc -t html -o web/manual.html -i README
```

   The txt2tags tool is available at
        http://txt2tags.sourceforge.net/



% -- CUT HERE --
@@ runtime-help-link Quickstart
%!include: Quickstart
@@ runtime-help-link Installation
%!include: Installation
@@ runtime-help-link UsingRoadMap
%!include: Usage
@@ runtime-help-link Configuration
%!include: Configuration
@@ runtime-help-link OpenStreetMap
%!include: OpenStreetMap
%!include: Map-Building

