gps recommendations?

Joshua Judson Rosen rozzin at geekspace.com
Fri May 17 23:38:28 EDT 2013


David Rysdam <david at rysdam.org> writes:
>
> My GPS is dying. I'm looking for a replacement, but I want a
> particular..."mindset" is probably a better word than "feature".
[...]
> Basically, I find that when I use the GPS, it's the brains and I'm just
> the car operator. I want to be the brains and the operator and have the
> GPS be navigator. I decide a route (or the backbone of one) and it keeps
> me on it.
>
> Does this exist? I know "waypoints" is a thing, but I'm not talking
> about visiting landmarks. I'm talking about entering in (most of) my
> route and having the GPS handle the details.

"Waypoints" doesn't *necessarily* mean "landmarks", though....

The term you actually want is "routepoint", but there's a fair amount
of confusion spread around about whether "waypoint" means "routepoint"
or "point of interest"/"landmark", and people/companies often say/write
one thing when they mean the other (it's like trying to find fettuccine
recipes on the WWW--you first need to guess which mis-spelling of
"fettuccine" people are likely to use...).

Actually, the term you *really* want (for the feature you want)
is "route-planning", or possibly "interactive route-planning"
(as opposed to "route-finding"). And, now that I mention that,
I seem to remember a discussion on *another* mailing list that we
were both on, a few years ago, about how someone was `looking for
a GPS unit that supports route-planning' and there was a bout of
`route-planning vs. route-finding' confusion/discourse that ensued....

Someone wrote a chapter for the FoxtrotGPS manual specifically about this,
including some perhaps non-obvious recommendations on the most effective
way to plan a route so as to help your satnav unit navigate in adherence
to your `route backbone' without confusing it:

        http://www.foxtrotgps.org/doc/foxtrotgps.html#Route-Planning

He apparently uses/likes a TomTom unit, so that's the route-export
format (other than GPX--which some standalone satnav units can read,
but I'm not sure which) that he contributed along with the route-planning
feature and docs.

(for the discussion that we had about terminology when adding that
 feature, see <https://bugs.launchpad.net/foxtrotgps/+bug/1035343>)

-- 
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))."



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