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GMAP5.00 written for 2016 Brevet season

About

This is Gmap5.00 a web app for showing Randonneur routes based on GPS recorded tracks combined with the cue sheets that will be printed on paper. It uses Google Maps API v3 but is not THE Google Map web site. We use the courtesy service that Google provides. All of the cues should reflect what a person sees along the route. They may include the townline boundaries and local store signs as well as bike path routes.

Changes

5.10 26 February 2014 new interface using jquery
5.11 16 March 2014 reduce and maybe elliminate scroll bars in flashwindow
5.12 27 March 2014 add zoom to start location &scale=start[&zoom=15]
5.13 June 2014 shortened names to 10 characters in tcx to stop 705 chrashes
5.14 22 June 2014 allow 15 character names as per Garmin tcx schema
use file name for course name in 1 track export
remove wpts from all in one export and use rte point for control
5.15 7 July 2014 Display a set time now dialog the first time the cue sheet is viewed.
5.16 20 March 2015 Added big annoying disclaimer
5.17 16 October 2015 Added csv download for cue sheets, the button is on both gpx download as well as cue view
added buttons to accept a promise to remember the disclaimer and a cookie to keep track
the cookie is only checked by the gmap400.php steering script

Full cue sheet versus Summary cue sheet

The full cue sheet is the final reference for the ride. Cues describe the the turns, the roads, distances and the control locations. The route designer also notes cautions as well as locations for support. Riders who rely on GPS get the track, but often leave the bulky cue sheet at home and miss the extra warnings and support information. The summary sheet extracts the extra information as well as the controls to produce a very short sheet that GPS riders can study and carry. The summary shows distance to the next control or warning and omits most other information.

Printing cue sheets

Final print formatting relies on the browser and operating system in your computer. To help with print size and formatting there are 6 buttons at the top of the cue sheet page. They adjust padding, lines and font size. Padding moves letters away from or closer to the lines. Lines makes the lines thicker or thinner. Font makes the letters bigger and smaller. Use 'Print Preview' in your browser to see how many pages it will create. If you can not read them go back to the pad, line, font buttons and make adjustments.

Customizing your cue sheets and Info cues

You can customize your own cue sheet by editing and adding cues. Editing can only be performed on the map view. Left click on the bubble of an existing cue and a mini-edit window will open. To insert a cue, find where you want it and right click exactly on the track line. An empty cue bubble is inserted at the nearest track point and the mini-editor opened. The raw window will have a guess at the turn type. You might use the guess or replace it by an Info cue. Info cues start with a blue triangle enclosing a white i and insert text that will appear on both full and summary sheets. You can save the customized copy of the gpx file on your computer by using 'Save File'.

GPS courses, tracks, routes and devices

Courses are recommended if your device can use them. Courses on the site are tailored to work on Garmin Edge 200 devices. Tracks are an excellent method of keeping on route using non-sport devices. Routes can also be downloaded, but are impossibly time consuming for us to test. Each generation of GPS devices seems to have different rules for routing making it impossible to publish routes for members with different devices. If you use routes, you test them.

Local file archives

You can customize your cue sheets and keep local copies. The main map view has buttons 'Load File' and 'Save File' which are convenient for keeping a local archive of routes from past years, tracks ridden and work in progress. But remember to check the official route on the web site before a ride. The date when the last change was made shows at the top of the sheet.

Creating routes

Practice creating routes by carrying your device on training rides. Record the track in your computer as a gpx file. If you have fit format that can be converted to gpx using GarminConnect or GPSBabel.

Advanced editing and Right click magic

Right click on the track (the black line) to insert a new cue into the sheet. The line is narrow so it can be hard to trigger. When the finger appears pointing at the line it can be clicked. The new cue snaps to the nearest track point.
Info cues are enterred by adding a new cue or by changing an existing cue. In either case, open the cue and then select the 'Change Icons' editor. The info symbol is the blue triangle under road icons.
Right click on a track name to start the Google directions service router. Note that this will adds cues to existing sheets. It is convenient to use but there are no safety checks. You can for example swap start and end of a track and route perfectly with right and left turns mostly swapped.
Right click on a bubble will open the cue editor. It has its own help.

GMAP 5.12 editing help

Editor help

Drag this help window over to one side of the screen so you see both this help and the edit window. You may need to resize the help window to make it all fit. The map can be dragged to get the edit window beside the help window. Drag the wholemap, not just the edit window. The tail of the edit window always points to where on the map you are editing. Then read on in the following pleats.

Overview

This is a incremental editor. It updates the gpx file any time you make changes or press Apply on the icon editor. The table at the top of the window has the same header that will appear on the detailled cue sheet including signs and place columns. Those columns may be blank of this view if those items are not part of this cue. The middle grey block has 3 text fields that you can edit. The big text field at top is what actually gets put into the gpx file as the 'desc'. It has all of the turn signals and road icon stuff in it. The formatter strips this stuff out and the remainder becomes the Description field on the cue sheet. The text field at left is the name of this cue. It only appears on some gps units. The text field at right 'Track' appears on all gps units under various headings. The bottom grey block has the edit buttons that pretty much do what they say but, there is more info on the next pleat.

What the buttons do

Delete - removes this cue from the file forever. There is no undo.
Cancel - this reverts the cue back to where you started and closes the edit window.
Change Icons - opens the icon editor which has 3 panes of little symbols. The first pane puts stop signs or other traffic signals in the Signals column of the cue sheet. The second pane puts up turn instructions like turn left in the turn column. The third pane puts road shapes under the turn icon. Mostly this is useful for showing T junctions, but more may be added.
Close - saves everything done and closes the edit window
X - icon at upper right closes the window leaving what ever edits done so far intact.

Point

The 'Point' field is saved as the name of the point. This text is displayed on the screen of GPS units that are following routes. If the field already exists in a gpx file and looks text it is not modified. If it looks like 'Google', GRTP or is a number then the importer tries to make a guess as to what the street name is in the desc field. Mostly this works.

Track

Track is the name that shows up in the course directory of a gps unit. It may be in the directory of tracks or routes depending on how you export the file. On modern gps units the directory is sorted to show the nearest course at the top of the list. On older units the directory is sorted alphabetically which is why you see a number at the beginning on a lot of my track names. I usually name the tracks with the name of the town where they start. You may not remember where you are going on a long ride but some one at the control usually knows where you are right now. Just choose that track and follow it and you never need to know where you are going.

Signals column

The traffic signals column is added if the formatter discovers any cue that has a special symbol like (ss) in the gpx file. To get rid of the column look over the cue sheet and edit out the traffic signals. The icon editor can be used by choosing 'ns' the first symbol. It looks like a white rectangle with 'none' written inside.

Road icons

Road icons draw little symbols of T or roundabout under the turn icons. Put them in using the 3rd pane of the icon editor. Mostly, don't use them but some like T are very much liked by riders who can dose a bit if they know that the next cue is a T and they will have to wake up there. To remove a road icon, choose the first symbol, the white rectangle with 'none' inside.

Place column

If you do not want a place column on the cue sheet just make sure that no place names appear in any where in the gpx file. To get a place column, write 'place' followed by any text at the end of the RAW field. That allows spaces to appear in the place name. You can use names like 'Halton Hills' or 'East Gwillimbury' but not Carleton Place. The formatter reads the cue and removes as much special stuff as it recognizes and then looks for 'place'. What ever follows the word 'place' goes into the place column.

Majik words in the desc field

(info) makes this an info cue. Info cues appear on both summary and detailled cue sheets and carry warnings such as safety hazards as well as areas with no services. Choose the blue triangle at the bottom of the 3rd pane of the icon editor to make an info cue.
(ss) (ts) (ys) - the basic traffic signs and signal lights. They are replaced by little icons on the cue sheets
(ri0)....(rin) - road icons. They are just an index into the icon table.
Turns - turns do not have special words. The formatter reads the text at the beginning of the line and tries to find a match in a table. This works pretty well since a lot of incomming cues seem follow a rigid format just as if they were computer generated. When writing cues, just write things like 'turn left', 'turn right' etc at the beginning of the line and the formatter usually figures it out. You can write any message you want as long as it does not say 'Turn right' etc..

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