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• Platform Specific Information
  • Windows CE Support
  • OLPC XO Laptop Support
  • iPhone/iPod Support
  • Familiar Support

Platform Specific Information

The generic instructions and information given elsewhere are appropriate for most "standard" linux desktop machines, but some handheld and "special" devices have slightly specific requirements. These are described here.

Windows CE Support

• Dependencies and Limitations
  The initial port to Windows was implemented by Ehud Shabtai.
  RoadMap is currently only available for Windows CE (PocketPC, Windows Mobile). There is no support for desktop Windows (XP, Vista, ..) -- the WIN32 API is not the same on all Windows platforms.
  RoadMap uses the WIN32 API exclusively, no specific graphic library is required.
  There is UNIX Makefile support for building the WinCE version of RoadMap using the arm-mingw32ce cross-compiler toolchain, available from http://cegcc.sourceforge.net .
  Maps cannot be built under Windows (buildmap and buildus have not been ported yet). Maps built under Linux can be used on PocketPC systems.
  The flite software is available under Windows: a PocketPC 2002 (ARM) binary is available on the RoadMap project's SourceForge web site. The flite.exe binary must be installed in the same folder as the roadmap.exe binary.
  The gpsd software is not available on Windows. Note that network access to a remote gpsd is possible (the remote computer must run UNIX).
  Instead of a local gpsd, RoadMap can uses a Windows serial port and the GPS source should then be specified as "COM1:", "COM2":, etc... Bluetooth devices are also known to work (over a virtual serial port).
  Only NMEA-capable GPS devices are supported, unless a remote gpsd is used.
  Features not available on Windows :
  • Downloading maps on the fly

  • The screenshots feature

  • The full-screen mode of RoadMap

  • The ~ and & shortcuts used when specifying pathnames.

• Configuration Files
  Windows CE based computers are usually of the PDA type, so we make it possible to install all RoadMap files in a memory card.
  The configuration directories on Windows CE are:
  1. \Program Files\roadmap
  2. \Storage Card\roadmap (preferred path)
  As Windows CE does not really have the concept of a user directory, RoadMap will automatically add to the list the directory holding the RoadMap executable.
  The default name of a memory card on your Windows CE device is extracted and automatically supported by RoadMap. In that case, replace \storage card\.. in the example above by e.g. \SD Card\.. .

• Installing maps
  On Windows CE the default map search path is:
  1. \Program Files\roadmap\maps
  2. \Storage Card\roadmap\maps (preferred path)

OLPC XO Laptop Support

The XO laptop, created by the One Laptop per Child project, has a large high resolution (900x1200) sunlight-readable screen, making it attractive for use with RoadMap.

If the XO is running a "standard" linux distribution (Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora are all available) then RoadMap installs just as it does on any other linux. But if the laptop is running the OLPC "Sugar" system, then RoadMap must be packaged as a Sugar "activity", which adds some extra requirements to its environment.

A pre-built copy of RoadMap.xo is available at the OLPC Activities page:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/RoadMap

If that copy is inappropriate or unavailable, you can build your own.

• Building the RoadMap.xo activity
  Start with a relatively clean copy of the RoadMap source tree from CVS (not the tarball), and change directory to "sugar", at the top-level of the tree. From there, simply run the script "mk_activity" -- this will build an appropriately-configured copy of RoadMap, and adds the system and user config to the the .zip-formatted archive that OLPC calls a ".xo" bundle. Just a few maps may be added to that bundle if you have your maps installed in /usr/local/share/roadmap/maps -- otherwise no maps will be provided.

• Installing maps
  RoadMap will look for maps in a directory called "RoadMap.maps" on any external media (SD or USB) that's mounted in the standard /media/NAME location on the XO.
  The default Map.Path on the XO is:
  1. SUGAR_BUNDLE_PATH/maps (i.e. below the installation directory)
  2. SUGAR_BUNDLE_PATH/maps/??
  3. /media/*/RoadMap.maps
  4. /media/*/RoadMap.maps/??

iPhone/iPod Support

The iPhone/iPod touch support is preliminary as of yet, but it is usable in the current state. Initial iPhone support (as well as this README) was provided by Morten Bek.

• Official vs. unofficial SDK:
  The official iPhone sdk is not used for the iPhone port. Since a GPS was added to the iPhone 3G, Apple has added a clause to the license agreement that prohibits developers from making car navigation applications using the official SDK.
  Other than this clause, one must sign an NDA when downloading the SDK, so effectively GPL'ed software can't be built using the SDK since publishing the source is a violation the NDA.
  Many people were hoping that once the iPhone 2.0 firmware was released, the NDA would be lifted and the port could be modified to work with the official SDK, but I guess that this new clause effectively ends that hope... Oh well, long live the unofficial SDK and jailbroken iPhones... :-)

• Compiling
  The iPhone binaries should be compiled using the unofficial iPhone toolchain (http://code.google.com/p/iphone-dev/wiki/Building). It should be possible to get the toolchain up and running on both OSX, Linux and MS Windows. In config.mk set the DESKTOP to iphone and optionally use some of the example options for setting CROSS, CFLAGS, etc. If you use the example options your binaries will be placed in

           /tmp/Applications/RoadMap.app
  

  The binaries will have references to

           /Application/RoadMap.app/resources
  

  so be sure to install in that location - or change your settings accordingly.
  The program compiles nicely with expat. Just download the latest version of expat and do a ./configure using the paths to your toolchain binaries. I haven't got dynamic linking to work, so instead I copy expat/.libs/expat.a to the roadmap/src directory - run the toolchain version of ranlib on the binary and then link with that library statically.

• Installation
  If you use the example options, simply use:

           scp -r /tmp/Applications/RoadMap.app root@your.iphone.ip:/Applications
  

  Notice that roadmap installs many additional binaries in RoadMap.app/bin. These are not needed for RoadMap to operate, but you may play around with them on the phone or delete them before copying the folder to the phone.
  Maps need to be placed in

           /Applications/RoadMap.app/resources/maps
  

  Maps are in a binary format and sometimes need to be converted to or built on the device on which they will be used. However, maps built on i386 linux are compatible with the iPhone.

• Known Issues
  • No menu support
  • Only preliminary toolbar support
  • No keyboard shortcuts (hard without a keyboard! :-)
  • No advanced dialog support (although messageboxes do work)
  • Returning to the dashboard quits the application. It could be useful to have it continuing to operate in the background, displaying a status icon in the iPhone status bar.

• Then What Actually Works?!?
  • Map drawing (with minor flaws), zooming (no iPhone-style pinching yet), panning.
  • GPS connection to gpsd
  • roadmap.screenobjects can be edited to show various buttons with various actions.
  • Trip logging
  • Drivers
  • Speech synthesis using flite -- requires flite from Saurik: http://www.telesphoreo.org/browser/trunk/data/flite

• Future Enhancements
  To fix all known issues, naturally :-)

Familiar Support

This section describes the installation of RoadMap on an ARM-powered PDA running Familiar Linux and the GPE graphic environment. The full README should be used as well, of course.

Some of the instructions below are dated. Proceed with caution.

• BEFORE THE INSTALL
  • Removing a prior installation of RoadMap
    Since RoadMap 1.0.4 the path to the maps has changed. In addition there is no more package for the maps (the maps are too big for that and there was only one example map anyway). Therefore the roadmap-sfca package should be removed first

             ipkg remove roadmap-sfca
    

    The name of the RoadMap package has also changed from roadmap-gtk2 to roadmap. Therefore the roadmap-gtk2 package should be removed:

             ipkg remove roadmap-gtk2
    

  • Making room for RoadMap
    On a PDA with 32Mb of RAM, GPE takes most of the available space and less than 2Mb of RAM is left available. For RoadMap to work one need to make some room. The author recommends removing xstroke and the GPE help from the bottom panel.
    Another problem is a bug in the Familiar X server that causes the file ~/.xsession-errors to grow infinitely in the ramdisk, eating up all the available RAM in a matter of days.
    The work-around is to not start the ipaq-sleep daemon. To do this, comment out the line "/etc/init.d/ipaq-sleep start" in the file:

                 /etc/X11/Xsession.d/69ipaq-sleep
    

  • Installing gpsd
    RoadMap depends on gpsd for receiving data from the GPS device. Therefore the gpsd package must be installed:

             ipkg install gpsd
    

    Once this has been done, the serial line must be configured for using gpsd (see the serial line configuration tool in the Settings folder).

  • Installing flite
    RoadMap uses flite for generating the voice announcements. RoadMap can be used without flite, but it will stay silent then.
    Note that flite is a very big program: it should be installed on the MMC, SD or CompactFlash (CF) card. Installing flite is easy: just copy the executable file. The problem is more where to find the executable..

• INSTALLING ROADMAP
  There are three steps: first install the RoadMap package, then install some maps and last setup your preferences if you installed RoadMap in a custom way.
  • Installing from the Familiar package
    If available at all, the RoadMap familiar distribution contains one .ipk package file. This package contains the RoadMap executables (roadmap and roadgps) as well as the configuration files for a GTK 2.0 setup (such as the Familiar 0.7.2 GPE image). This package does not contain the map files or the map index file.
    If RoadMap is available from your feed:

             ipkg install roadmap
    

    If you downloaded the ipk files on the iPAQ:

             ipkg install roadmap_X.Y.Z_arm.ipk
    

    RoadMap is useless without maps. The maps can be downloaded from the web site (http://roadmap.sourceforge.net/maps.html or mirrors) or generated from the US Census Bureau's files (see later).
    It is strongly recommended you install the maps on a CompactFlash or SD/MMC card, and not on the iPAQ internal flash. The reason is that the maps are way too big to be installed on the iPAQ flash. As configured, RoadMap will look for the maps either in
    • /mnt/hda/share/roadmap or
    • /mnt/card/share/roadmap.
    (This can be changed using the Map.Path item in the RoadMap preferences dialog.)
    The set of maps for California represents more that 100 Mbyte of data, the whole US about 1.6 Gbyte. Unless you are the lucky owner of a large capacity CompactFlash, you will have to install a subset. A capacity of 128 Mbyte is enough in most cases, 64 Mbyte might be enough if you do not travel far from home.
    To build the maps yourself, you need the Linux/i686 binary or the source tarball. See the next section for more details.

  • Installing maps
    The RoadMap package is preconfigured for maps stored either in a MMC, SD or CompactFlash (CF) card. The map files must be installed in a subdirectory of the device's root directory named "share/roadmap". The reason for that is to follow standard UNIX convention and make it easier to store other types of data in the device (such as MP3 files).
    The file system used for the device is indifferent (RoadMap maps comply with the 8+3 limitation of the FAT file system) but VFAT is recommended (if only because this is the factory default file system).
    The default Map.Path on the Zaurus is:
    1. ROADMAP_MAP_DIR, chosen at compile time,
    2. /opt/QtPalmtop/share/roadmap/..., and its subdirectories,
    3. /mnt/cf/QtPalmtop/share/roadmap/... (preferred path) and its subdirectories, and
    4. /mnt/card/QtPalmtop/share/roadmap/... and its subdirectories.
    The last two directories are located on a memory card, as this would be the only reasonable place where to install the maps considering their size.
    The map files can be retrieved from the RoadMap site:
    http://roadmap.sourceforge.net
    The first file to install in the share/roadmap subdirectory is the file named "usdir.rdm". This file is mandatory: this is the index used to retrieve all other map files. All other files are optional: one can load a limited subset of maps only. If a map is not available, RoadMap will issue a warning message.

  • Setting the user preferences
    Start Roadmap, select File / Preferences. The preferences dialog is made of a (long) serie of tabbed screens. Most preferences do not need to be modified.

  • Configuration Files
    Although the Sharp Zaurus runs linux, its setup is somewhat unusual, and the location of the configuration files is different than the standard install.
    The rationale for the selected setup, which is typical of a PDA, is to try to make RoadMap an auto-installed option when sliding in the proper memory card. So the locations for files always include the Zaurus mount points for the CompactFlash or SD cards.
    The configuration directories on the Sharp Zaurus PDA are:
    1. /opt/QtPalmtop/share/roadmap,
    2. /mnt/cf/QtPalmtop/share/roadmap (preferred path),
    3. /mnt/card/QtPalmtop/share/roadmap and
    4. ~/.roadmap.