[DebianGIS-dev] Bug#456152: Bug#456152: gpsdrive: Can't override window size

[Mark Robinson]

Andreas Putzo wrote:
> Looks like this is a mistake in the manual page. The correct command
> line switch is now -g <geometry>, for example:
>   gpsdrive -g 800x600

Hi Andreas,

Thanks very much for teaching me about -g.

Sadly it's still quite badly broken, failing to correctly calculate the sizes 
for the various panels leaving critical values (lat, long etc) unreadable and 
failing to make the map the same size as the panel it's assigned to.

Further, there are obvious map rendering errors using when using neither the 
no_dir nor expedia maps at wide zooms.

The scale bar at the bottom right of the image appears to be approximately an 
order of decimal magnitude out.

The map grabbing code seems buggy too.

> -s disables the splash screen shown at startup now and -r is no longer
> used, see also gpsdrive --help.

> mark at piwakawaka:~$ gpsdrive --help
> gpsdrive: unrecognized option `--help'
> 
> Copyright (c) 2001-2006 Fritz Ganter <ganter at ganter.at>
>          Website: http://www.gpsdrive.de
> 
> -v        show version
> -h        print this help
> -d        turn on debug info
> -D X      set debug Level to X
> -T        do some internal unit Tests(don't start gpsdrive)
> -e        use Festival-Lite (flite) for speech output
> -o        serial device, pty master, or file for NMEA *output*
> -f X      Select friends server, X is i.e. friendsd.gpsdrive.de
> -l LANG   Select language of the voice,
>           LANG may be english, spanish or german
> -s HEIGHT set height of the screen, if autodetection
>           don't satisfy you, X is i.e. 768,600,480,200
> -r WIDTH  set width of the screen, only with -s
> -1        have only 1 button mouse, for example using touchscreen
> -a        display APM Stuff ( battery status, Temperature)
> -b Server Servername for NMEA server (if gpsd runs on another host)
> -c WP     set start position in simulation mode to waypoint name WP
> -x        create separate window for menu
> -M mode   set guimode to desktop, pda or car
> -i        ignore NMEA checksum (risky, only for broken GPS receivers
> -q        disable SQL support
> -F        force display of position even it is invalid
> -S        don't show splash screen
> -P        start in Pos Mode
> -W x      set x to 1 to switch WAAS/EGNOS on, set to 0 to switch off
> -H ALT    correct altitude, adding this value (ALT) to altitude
> -C file   set config file (--config-file)
> mark at piwakawaka:~$

The --help option spits an error message but works anyway.

The -g option does not appear in the help or the manpage, while the -s and -r 
options are incorrectly documented in both.

Menus to configure mysql and pgsql seem to have disappeared and that support 
which remains seems broken.

It's a shame that this very promising program seems to be becoming less 
functional with more development.

Perhaps it is worth considering reverting distribution to an earlier version 
which is less buggy.