PSION CD 2/PsionCDVol2.iso/Programs/49/README.TXT

Text File | 1997-12-09 | 15.6 KB | 361 lines

Psi-Mapper/Ireland 2.1 (C) UK 1994-7 Steve Litchfield
=======================================================
Released as shareware December 1997 ...

(Note that registration codes are the same as for Mapper/Ireland on
the Series 3a/c palmtops, so if you've already registered you don't
have to pay again!)

Registration address (send cheque for 10 pounds to):

Steve Litchfield
22 Grays Crescent
Woodley
Berks
RG5 3EN

or register electronically on Compuserve with GO SWREG no. 6567,
or with a credit card at http://www.swregnet.com/1222p.htm

Psi-Mapper update information and new versions can be found at
http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/
If you have trouble with that address, try www.3-lib.co.uk instead.

Psi-Mapper/Ireland is shareware. This does not make it a free program!
Yes, you can copy it freely to friends or acquaintances, or even upload
the original ZIP file to bulletin boards etc, but if you like it and
continue to use it, then you are honour-bound to register the program.

If you have already registered Psi-Mapper for Great Britain, you can
register at half-price, i.e. 5 pounds, though you have to do so by
post due to the low sum of money involved.

Registration gets you:
a) a clear conscience that you're using paid-for software, and that
   you're helping support future development of Psi-Mapper/Ireland and
   other quality Psion shareware software.
b) a special code that will personalise your copy of the program, remove
   the opening and closing shareware 'nag' screens and personalise the
   information bar with your name. No need to re-install the software,
   just use the registration menu option and type in the code!
c) A direct say in how the program develops.

********************************************************************
*****************    IMPORTANT!!    ********************************
********************************************************************
This text file documents the history of the program, its installation,
and some of the more technical aspects to running it. For general help
in using and understanding Psi-Mapper/Ireland, please browse through the
on-line help. This help is the only documentation of most of the
program's features, so work through it properly! 8-)
********************************************************************

All rights reserved, and copyrights, including the database files and
their format, where appropriate (see listings below). Psi-Mapper/Ireland
is a Geographical Information System (GIS) with a friendly interface.....

****Please note**** that the displayed graphics, coastlines, boundaries,
railways and road vectors are shown diagrammatically, for ease of
understanding. Please especially note Psi-Mapper's low resolution.
Everything is at least +/-1km both horizontally and vertically!

Using low resolution means
(i) that the program data can be built from public
domain information
(ii) that Psi-Mapper won't conflict or overlap with existing PC-based GIS
systems or infringe map copyrights
(iii) (most importantly) that quite large areas and amounts of
information can be crammed into a palmtop, where a PC version would need
megabytes!!


Components and Installation.
----------------------------
This is the full distribution of Psi-Mapper/Ireland and contains
everything you need. Note that there will also be additional packs of
specialist overlays available as and when people ask for them, see the
web site for details.

Please also note that it may help to disable the Series 5's
auto-switch-off facility while installing Psi-Mapper, as otherwise
you'll leave PsiWin transferring files while you make a cup of tea, only
to come back and find that the S5 has switched off right in the middle
of the procedure.

If you unzipped Psi-Mapper OK, you should have ended up (depending on
the way you did the unzipping) with either:

(i) about 70 or so separate files.

    On the Series 5 disk you wish to install on, make sure viewing of the
    \System folder is turned on and then go into \System\Apps and make a
    new folder \MapperIR. Thus you'll now have a folder whose path reads
    something like \System\Apps\MapperIR. Go inside this folder and make a
    sub-folder called \Plans, thus making valid the path
    \System\Apps\MapperIR\Plans. Use PsiWin to COPY all the files
    starting with the letters "TP" or so into this \Plans folder. A
    good way to do this is to tell PsiWin to sort the files "by name"
    and then to highlight all the TPnnnnnn. files (by clicking on the
    first one, then shift-clicking the last one in the list). Finally,
    drag and drop them all in one go into the \Plans folder using the
    RIGHT mouse button. Using the RIGHT button brings up a mini-menu,
    from which you can choose "Move". Once the town plans are moved
    over, simply highlight all the rest of the Psi-Mapper/Ireland
    files in PsiWin and do the same, but putting the files into the
    main \System\Apps\MapperIR folder. Note in all of this that you
    DON'T want to CONVERT any of these files, they're all already in
    Series 5 format!

(ii) a single text file (this file!) plus a folder called \MapperIR.

    On the Series 5 disk you wish to install on, make sure viewing of
    the \System folder is turned on and then go into \System\Apps Drag
    and drop the \MapperIR folder across into \System\Apps. If all
    goes well, the \MapperIR folder will appear underneath \Apps, i.e.
    you'll end up with \System\Apps\MapperIR, containing all the
    Psi-Mapper/Ireland program and data files. Note that you DON'T
    want to CONVERT any of the Psi-Mapper files, they're all already
    in Series 5 format!

Thus Psi-Mapper and the overlays etc are in \System\Apps\MapperIR
All the town plan files are in \System\Apps\MapperIR\Plans

If all went well, you should now have a new Psi-Mapper/IR icon on your
Extras bar.

---------------------------------

In this distribution are the following files, Contributor information
also included where known or appropriate. PLEASE note that NONE of the
files below are compatible with the Series 3a/3c versions of
Psi-Mapper/Ireland, despite filenames being similar. This is because of
fundamental file format changes in EPOC32 and was unavoidable.

(Note the files marked with -* are ESSENTIAL and MUST be included for the
program to run at all! All other files are optional and can be omitted
to save space)

README.TXT - this file!

Mapperir.app - the main program module
Mapperir.aif - the application icon file

plus some support files:

Mapihelp.hlp  - the comprehensive on-line help file

Towns.mp1   - a data-set of towns and cities
Coastlin.mp2 - a data-set showing the coastline of Ireland
Roads.mp2    - a data-set of the Irish motorway and most of the primary route
               network

(the above three files were updated and compiled by Eddie Slupski,
summer 1997)

Mapper.mbm - some icons for use with the overlays, including a default
               one, the town planning symbols and the title screen

Vector overlays (i.e. lines and boundaries):
National.mp4 - the boundary between Northern and Southern Ireland
Railways.mp4 - a vector data-set of the Irish railway network
Osgrid.mp4   - a vector data-set of the Irish Grid Reference system
Fifty.mp4    - a vector data-set of the Irish 1:50000 map index grid

Item overlays (i.e. specific points and labels and reference info):
Airports.mp3 - airports! (updated by Eddie Slupski, 1997)
Interest.mp3 - places of interest (updated by Zoe Ingle, 1997)
Camping.mp3  - camp sites
Peaks.mp3    - mountain peaks over 700m (compiled by Zoe Ingle, 1996)
Portsire.mp3 - ports capable of taking yachts (contributed by Graeme Smith)
HMCGIre.mp3  - coastguard stations (contributed by Graeme Smith)
CoastRad.mp3 - coastguard radio stations (contributed by Graeme Smith)
Coast2c.mp3  - coast to coast walk - (contr. by Paddy Dillon, July 96)
Ulstrway.mp3 - Ulster Way walk - (contr. by Paddy Dillon, July 96)
Walkfest.mp3 - Some walking festivals - (contr. by Paddy DIllon, July 96)
YHA.mp3      - Youth Hostels - (contr. by Paddy Dillon, July 96)
Forest.mp3   - Forest Parks - (contr. by Paddy Dillon, July 96)
NatTrust.mp3 - National Trust sites (Northern Ireland only) -
               (contr. by Paddy Dillon, July 96)
Cathedr.mp3  - Cathedrals, abbeys, ruins etc - (contr. by Zoe Ingle,
               Jul 96)
Viewpont.mp3 - Viewpoints - (contr. by Zoe Ingle, Jul 96)
Museum.mp3   - Museums etc - (contr. by Zoe Ingle, Jul 96)
Tourinfo.mp3 - Tourist Info Centres - (contr. by Paddy Dillon, July 96)

Each of the .mp3 overlays listed above has an associated .MBM file of
the same name. These are the on-screen icons for overlays, and will be
used if present in the main \System\Apps\MapperIR folder. If they are
not present, a default 'star' icon will be used....

Each of the overlays includes reference information for each item, and
this can be displayed by turning 'Overlay Reference Fields' On.

Note the town plan schematics, as used in Psi-Mapper for Great
Britain. Users can use the VECTDRAW utility (available on request) to
create town plans of their locality and then (hopefully) submit them
to me for inclusion in the next release of Psi-Mapper/Ireland. The
TPLIST.OPO utility is useful to keep track of which towns have been
'done'! A selection of about 20 town plans is supplied with
Psi-Mapper/Ireland v2.0, as a starter, and hopefully the number of
them will grow as time goes on.


.MP3 Overlays and their format etc.
-----------------------------------
There are three ways to create your own .MP3 overlays, you can choose
the method that works best for you:

(i)   Use the overlay creation menu options to create an overlay and
then use the point and shoot method to identify where you want each item
icon to appear, together with information for the reference field. This
method can obviously be time-consuming if you have a lot of items to
enter, but is friendly and easy to use! Note that once you've created an
overlay with this method you cannot open it in Psion's DATA application.
This is a DATA limitation on the Series 5, unfortunately. Use the
supplied utility CustomEd.OPO to edit these special overlays.

(ii)   If you have a lot of items in your overlay and you know
their OS northings and eastings (as numbers from 0 to 1000, so you may
have to divide your figures by 10, 100 or 1000...), you can make the MP3
file yourself by preparing (for example) a tab-delimited text file and then
importing into DATA. I've supplied a template file (MP3-Temp.lat) which you
can copy and rename as appropriate. The general format is:
    Standard DATA file, named xxxxxxxx.MP3 in \SYSTEM\APPS\MAPPERIR\
    4 fields: Name (text), Eastings (numeric, 0 to 1000),
              Northings (numeric, 0 to 1000), Reference Info (text)

    The first record is a header record and should contain
    (What the reference fields represent)
    0
    0
    (Blank)

    The second record and following records contain
    (Name)
    (Eastings)
    (northings)
    (Reference info)

(iii) Use the supplied CustomEd.opo utility to add to and to edit your
     custom overlay. This is a simple data editor and is still in the
     prototype stage.

You will probably want to create a custom icon as well. In this case,
Psi-Mapper needs a 17 by 17 single-plane .MBM file of the same
filename as the .MP3 overlay, but with a .MBM extension. There are
detailed instructions on how to do this in the on-line Psi-Mapper
help database.


.MP4 overlays and their format
-------------------------------
These vector overlays are non-trivial to create, and are best only
tackled if you know what you're doing. For the record, here is a quick
summary. Note that you can copy and rename the supplied MP4-Temp.lat
template database as a way of getting started. Then use DATA itself to
construct your records.

The MP4 format is simply groups of 5 eastings/northings pairs per
record. The 1st/last duplicate/line-up. All ferries/railways etc thus
are fitted into block of 5 coordinate pairs. The vector *name* is
printed if required to the top right of the third coordinate pair,
normally, or to the bottom left if you flag this to Psi-Mapper by setting
the eastings coordinate of the *first* point in a record to be negative.

First field is text format, all the rest are numeric.
All numbers are in 1000s of eastings (i.e. 1km resolution).

e.g. Record 1:

Basingstoke
E1:110
N1:234
E2:114
N2:227
E3:118
N3:220
E4:125
N4:210
E5:132
N5:200

Record 2:

Basingstoke
E1:132
N1:200

 etc etc


Deleting info from the custom town database
------------------------------------------------------------
Use the supplied CustomEd.opo utility to maintain and prune your list
of custom towns. Once in the program, use the Menu functions to make
progress.


Grabbing the current map screen as a .MBM file
---------------------------------------------
You may well want to grab a map screen as a standard Psion .MBM file, for
printing or editing using SKETCH or any other Psion bit-map editor.
Grabbing the Psion screen is done with pressing 'Control', 'Shift',
'Function' and 'S' simultaneously (it's easier to do than it sounds).


_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_

Thanks for trying Psi-Mapper/Ireland! If you decide to remove Psi-Mapper
from your Psion, please note that it creates several small files in
\SYSTEM\APPS\MAPPERIR\ on your default disk, which you may want to remove
at some stage.


Small print:
------------
1) Reverse engineering of the program or data modules is strictly
   forbidden. If you would like to create a complementary program and use
   the Psi-Mapper data-sets, then please get in touch with me.

2) To speed up registrations, you can quote your email
   address for quick return of your registration code, or use the
   Internet RegNet or Compuserve SWREG scheme.

3) On-line support for Psi-Mapper/Ireland can be found on the Web
   at http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/

4) If you give the program to a friend (as is encouraged with shareware!),
   then it's always best to give him/her the original ZIP file. If the
   transfer takes place by Infrared or Compact Flash, then do *not* give
   your friend your MapperIR.reg registration file, as this is unique to
   you and contains *your* name, and subsequent piracy will tell the
   world who started the outbreak!

5) Thanks to all the testers and contributors out there, who have
   supplied ideas, support, bug-reports, data, code fragments etc. You
   are too numerous to mention! If *you* find a bug or spot an error etc
   in any of the overlays, then please get in touch!

6) Note that the Irish Grid coordinate system is used with the kind
   written permission of Ordnance Survey.

7) Note on copyrights etc.: be careful to only make use of publicly
   available and public domain data sources when compiling any overlays
   or town/item plans, unless of course you sourced the information (from
   memory?) in the first place! If you submit an overlay to myself for
   inclusion in future versions of Psi-Mapper, please state your
   source(s) of information and their copyright status.

8) Disclaimer: I accept no responsibility for anything happening to you
   as a result of inaccurate information within Psi-Mapper! I try to
   keep the overlays up-to-date as possible, but that is as far as my
   liability goes!

9) Do not use this application while on the move! If you crash your car
    while looking at your Psion, don't blame me!!

Steve Litchfield
e-mail addresses:
[e-mail]
[e-mail]