http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:18:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/19/use-and-make-free-as-in-beer-and-freedom-maps-with-openstreetmap/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/19/use-and-make-free-as-in-beer-and-freedom-maps-with-openstreetmap/#comments Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:05:55 +0000 Joe http://www.ghacks.net/?p=11279 Hundreds of websites offer mapping services, which highlight roads, railways, streets and scores of other things. Most of these sites charge for commercial use of their data and almost certainly won’t allow users to change the maps in a wiki-like fashion.

OpenStreetMap is a project to provide maps, like Google Maps does. Unlike sites like Google, though, OpenStreetMap provides its data freely under a Creative Commons licence.

The site relies on its users to utilise their GPS devices to record roads, something that can be done through several pieces of software available for platforms ranging from Linux to PocketPC to iPhones. These pieces of software produce journeys which can be traced around, labelled using software and then uploaded to OSM. As roads change, other users can then edit these pieces of information.

Many websites and appplication, especially those involved in the free software movement, utilise OpenStreetMap’s data.

To contribute to this project, you need a GPS receiver. Then, you need software to log it in the ‘GPX’ format; the project’s wiki lists a number of pieces of software for several platforms which do that. TopoGrafix Personally, I use Track n Trail for iPhone. OSM seem to like GPSBabel for non-mobile operating systems. Maps are then uploaded to OpenStreetMap, where using a Java editor they are edited and published. If this sounds complicated, a clearer how-to guide is available.

To summarise, OpenStreetMap is a wonderful idea. Coverage is patchy outside major cities, although most major roads in most Western countries are marked. There is no harm in contributing, naturally! It gives but more access to free information.

Tags: foss, google maps, gps, mapping, Open Source, openstreetmap, routes, sat nav, satellite navigative

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/19/use-and-make-free-as-in-beer-and-freedom-maps-with-openstreetmap/feed/ 5 http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/27/lyx-a-foss-wysiwym-latex-word-processor/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/27/lyx-a-foss-wysiwym-latex-word-processor/#comments Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:39:50 +0000 Joe http://www.ghacks.net/?p=10163 You have no doubt heard of ‘WYSIWYG’ editors, which show you what you get. The vast majority of HTML editors and word processors operate on a WYSIWYG principle, but another principle is WYSIWYM – ‘what you see is what you mean’. The key idea of WYSIWYM editors is that the users merely have to concentrate on structure and content, instead of writing aesthetically.

The introductory paragraph no doubt sounds confusing, but the idea is that content and presentation are separated. Software like LyX expects the user to tell it the documents structure – such as marking where titles are – and LyX will then concern itself with the aesthetics, so the user need not fuss with fonts.

LyX is a free, cross-platform and open source word processor based on LaTeX mark-up language. LaTeX is designed to allow formulae and other such things to be easily inserted into documents, making LyX particularly useful when writing scientific or mathematical documents. LyX is currently available for Windows (2000 upwards), Linux and Mac OS X although builds operate for other operating systems.

I have only used LyX under Ubuntu as it requires the installation of TeX, which totals up to about 300MB. This put deterred me from installing it on my MacBook Pro, which barely has 10GB free space! LyX ran smoothly under Ubuntu, which is no surprise as it will be aimed primarily at Linux users.

Regarding usability, it takes some getting used to not having to deal with aesthetics. I found myself searching for the font dialog for about 20 minutes, before realising fonts were not essential in this program. It is quite easy to get typing but the transition between software like OpenOffice and Pages to this really was not natural. As I’m not a scientist, I rarely use LyX although I have no doubt it is useful for them (several of my friends have vouched for it!).

LyX can export into several formats, including PDFs and DOCs. It is also capable of handling right-to-left writing systems, like Hebrew and Arabic, and allows graphics to be inserted into documents.

Tags: foss, free and open source, latex, lyx, Open Source, software, tex, word processor

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