oAWelcome to the Greater London version of the Geographical Information System for the Psion palmtops.
Psi-Mapper/London's documentation is more or less all on-line in this help file. Browse through the help file and the Psi-Mapper/London program itself and experiment with the functions you discover!
Experienced Mapper users please note the Quick Reference screen.
APsi-Mapper/London is one of the smaller relatives in the Mapper 'family'. By customising the display modes and using the idea of 'sticky' overlays etc., you will find Psi-Mapper/London a useful tool in both your personal and business life.
You can find your way round most of the program's functions by having a browse/play through the menus, or by using the Psion 'short-cuts' shown.
AOnce you have two places selected, you can perform distance, bearing, time and fuel calculations. Psi-Mapper/London gives you the 'as the crow-flies' distance in miles and km, and then gives you an estimate of the 'on-the-road' mileage, and other information, based on a well-averaged 'fudge' factor.
You can change the estimated average speed used for the calculations by using the "Personal settings" dialog.
5COne of the most common problem new Mapper users have is avoiding screen clutter, so here's a few tips to reduce the level of screen detail.
First and most obviously, zoom in further with the silk screen icons or Control-M, or by using the drop-down box. Keep zooming in. If things are still not legible, then read on...
If it's just the places that are too cluttered, reduce the main detail level temporarily using the menu options or the drop-down box, or else adjust the level of auto-detail from the General Settings dialog.
If the road names are getting in the way, you can turn them off completely or adjust the zoom level at which their names display in the "Road Settings" dialog.
If it's overlay items which are too crowded, then you can make use of the "Step through overlay" to display them one at a time.
AThere are many ways of moving around in Psi-Mapper/London:
- You can use the arrow or page keys to scroll the map.
- You can use <Enter> or the pen or the 'Centre select' menu option to choose the map centre (very useful for zooming in on one spot)
- You can 'Find' places or overlay items and jump to them
- You can step through overlays, selecting particular items
- You can 'jump to' a particular position by specifying the National Grid or lat/long coordinates
FYou can zoom in and out with the menu options or their short-cuts.
Or you can use the number keys 2 to 7 as 'hot-keys' to go to specific zoom levels in one keypress.
You can have four levels of detail, from 'None' to 'Low' (major towns/areas) to 'Medium' (all towns/areas) to 'High' (all towns etc, including some extra smaller locations).
Any selected towns will be shown in bold on all detail levels.
Note the auto-detail feature, which sets the detail level according to the degree of zoom you're using. You can fiddle with the density of auto-detail according to your taste in the 'Settings' menu option. There is the facility to temporarily raise or lower the detail on any particular map view by using the '+' and '-' icons in the information window or the appropriate menu options, but the auto-detail will kick in again next time the map centre is moved or zoomed.
Note the scale ruler along the bottom of the screen. This can be turned off if desired.
Note the information window proudly displays to the world if you haven't registered, this will change to your name when you've typed in your personal registration code.
The <ESC> key will redraw the screen at any time.
By using the Annotate function, you can use the pen to draw directly on the map display. In later versions of Psi-Mapper it may also be possible to print these annotated maps directly from the program. In the meantime, you can grab the screen with Shift-Control-Fn-S and merge into a Sketch file for printing etc.
Psi-Mapper often takes a few seconds to display a map or scan its database, but you don't have to wait if you don't want to, using the pointer or pressing Menu, Help or any other valid key should interrupt the program and give you control.
BWhen asking Psi-Mapper/London to find a place name, you can just give it part of the name if you like, and it will search for any place names containing the phrase you asked for.
This can be used to advantage when you are not sure of the exact spelling of the place you're after, e.g. Plaistow, you could ask for 'plai'.
You can also search for items in an overlay, e.g.find 'Park Lane' in the 'Hotels' data set.
Both places and items that have been 'found' are classed as 'selected'. For more information on what this means, please read the help section on 'Selections'.
You can search for individual road names and move to their location, but please note that roads cannot be 'selected' in the same way as places and items.
DEvery time you Find a place name or overlay item in Psi-Mapper, it is shown in the selection area on the info window.
There are two selection 'slots' (shown separated by a '/'), the first is filled by your first successful find, and the second by your second find. Please note that the contents of the two fields can be swapped by pressing using 'Swap selections' (Control-w) or by tapping in the selection box at any time.
The distance calculation is only valid when both selection slots are filled.
Note that having found a place, you can set it up to be your 'home' town with the appropriate menu option, which will have appeared automatically on the 'Towns' menu. This enables you to more easily examine journeys etc from the same place each time you use Psi-Mapper/London, by choosing 'Journeys from xxxxxxx' etc.
This clears any existing selections and selects your 'home' town in the first selection slot. The 'home' town can only be changed by selecting a different town in the first slot and using 'Set xxxxx as Home' again.
AA RoadWatch2
AA Roadwatch - 0336 401 plus
Central London - add 122
M4 to M1 - add 123
M1 to Dartford Tunnel - add 124
Dartford Tunnel to M23 - add 125
M23 to M4 - add 126
M25 - add 127
Table1
Title
settings" dialog.
EThe idea of the overlays is that having worked out where you are and where you're going (bold type towns etc), you can zoom in and overlay information from the overlays you have installed or created.
There are two main types of overlay:
(i) Item overlays. These are specific items which can be represented by an icon, e.g. a place of interest. In addition to a name, each item may have a reference field (e.g. Phone number details) which can be turned on or off in the 'Overlay settings' dialog.
You can display item overlays in two ways. Either a simple 'display them all in one go' approach, or a 'step-through' method where each displayed item is detailed separately as the overlay is drawn. This latter approach is best used when there are lots of overlay items very close together...
Overlays of this type have file extension .MP7,
Note that you can construct your own overlays using Psi-Mapper itself, so there's no reason why you couldn't have, for example, ACME Ltd's sales outlets, with the company logo etc. See the help topic "Creating a new overlay".
(ii) Vector overlays. These are sets of lines and annotations. Overlays of this type have file extension .MP8.
Vector overlays shipped include main-line railway lines, Tube lines and Tube Zones.
For both types of overlay, there are a wealth of customisable settings you can play around with! Of particular note are the settable levels beneath which text labels are not displayed. This allows you to zoom out without cluttering up the map screen too much!
AThere are numerous settings you can tinker with, and these are saved between sessions. It should be fairly obvious what they all do. Note in particular the concept of 'sticky' overlays, whereby Psi-Mapper/London remembers which overlay of each type was last used and overlays it on each displayed screen.
Also saved are your current position and zoom level etc.
In addition to all this, you can add your own place names to the map.
KThere are a few steps to creating and using your own item overlays. Please note that Psi-Mapper/London does things in a certain way to ensure maximum performance and minimum disk usage.
Step 1
Use the "Create new item overlay" command. Enter a brief filename (up to 8 characters) in the space provided. Don't worry, you'll get the chance to give a fuller description later on. Fill in also concise text descriptions of what the "Name" and "Reference" fields in the overlay will represent (e.g. "Site name" and "Telephone no."). Tap on "OK" and Psi-Mapper will confirm the overlay's creation and give brief instructions on creating a suitable icon (you'll get to that later).
Step 2
Use the "Add items to a custom overlay" command and add at least one item to your new overlay, using the supplied cross-hairs to locate it.
Step 3
You now need to add the new overlay to Psi-Mapper/London's master overlay index so that it comes up as one of the choices in the "Display" dialogs. Make sure you have viewing of the "System" folder turned on in the system screen "Preferences" and then navigate to inside the \System\Apps\MapperLo folder. Locate the "Overlays.idx" file and tap on it to open it in DATA. Add a new entry, giving your brief filename in the first field (e.g. "MYSITES") and a fuller description in the second (e.g. "ABC corp. sites 1997/1998"). Leave the "Vector" field set to zero. Save the entry and close the file.
That's basically it. Your new overlay should appear in the overlay choice dialogs, with its full description, and should display properly when asked. Add entries as you wish using the built in Psi-Mapper functions.
Newly created overlays display by default using a 'star' icon. If you want to use another icon of your own devising, follow these steps:
a) go into SKETCH and make a new black and white graphic, 17 by 17 pixels.
b) export if to an EPOC picture file called xxxxxxxx.mbm (where xxxxxxxx is your overlay's 8-character filename) in any convenient folder.
c) use Control-c (Copy) and Control-v (Paste) to paste a copy of this file in your \System\Apps\MapperLo folder on your default disk.
Next time the program is asked to display your overlay, it will look for, find and display your new custom icon!
Note that I also supply a small CustomEd.opo utility which allows direct numeric editing of created overlays.
Giving you even more options, if you have lots of suitable data in delimited text form (either from another program or as part of a conversion of an overlay from Psi-Mapper/London for the Series 3) you can make a copy of the supplied MP7-Temp. template database and import your text data directly in. Name your new overlay such that it ends in ".mp7".
For the technically minded, the reason why Psi-Mapper can't update the 'overlays.idx' itself is that OPL/32 can't *write* to a DATA file. In fact the reason why the overlays index file is needed in the first place is because the Series 5 directory services are so unbearably slow when large CF disks are involved! Hopefully my workaround is sufficient.
BPsi-Mapper/London is (C) UK 1997-9 Steve Litchfield
Freeware
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Based upon the Ordnance Survey map with the written permission of The Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office, (C) Crown Copyright. MC 0055.
Thanks also to those people who contributed overlays, especially Tony Crocker and Eddie Slupski.
DISCLAIMER
Steve Litchfield and 3-Lib accept no responsibility for the accuracy of the information contained within Psi-Mapper/London or any of its overlays, and this program is used entirely at your own risk!
Psi-Mapper/London2
Basics2
Avoiding clutter2
Moving around2
Views and displays2
5O'Finding places, roads and overlay items2
Selections2
Calculations2
Overlays2
Customising Psi-Mapper/London2
Creating a new item overlay2
Radius Circle2
This feature allows you to answer questions like "How many tube stations are within 2 miles of here?" The shown circle can be sized in miles in the General Settings dialog or at display time within the shown dialog.
About Psi-Mapper/London2
Useful London nos.2
London Tourist Board - 0171 4394996/7
Imperial London hotels Ltd - 0171 8378844
London Hotels - Discount Reservations - 0171 454 45000
London Hotel/Ticket Services - 0181 8976903
West End theatre bookings - 0181 4276566
Useful travel-related nos.2
London Regional Transport (buses/tubes) - 0171 2221234
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