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activityworkshop / GpsPrune

GpsPrune is a map-based application for viewing, editing and converting coordinate data from GPS systems.
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Serious usability issue: Join track ranges? #42

Closed Gnlfz007 closed 3 years ago

Gnlfz007 commented 3 years ago

I'm drawing a track and I have to stop with ESC half way done because of an error. Then I want to continue the track. I cannot manage this after 1 hour of consulting the howto and other resources found in the internet. The function "sew together" throws always an error message and there is not other feature which could do this. Is this possible al all?!

This issue renders Gpsprune completely useless because connecting track ranges is a standard use-case.

activityworkshop commented 3 years ago

I think when you write "Serious usability issue renders GpsPrune completely useless", what you're really trying to say is that you can't figure out how to perform this task and are frustrated because it should be simple. So let's try.

First of all, you may not "have to stop with ESC" just because you clicked in the wrong place. Just use the "Delete" key to delete the most recently placed track point and continue drawing as before. Then all of your drawn points will belong to the same track segment. Another thing you can do is to just carry on and complete your whole drawing. Then, after you have finished (either with the "Esc" key or by double-clicking the final track point), you can always move (drag) the points or insert extra points (by dragging the mid-point) to tweak the shape as you wish. So these are ways for you to avoid closing the track segment and therefore you don't need to merge anything.

OK, so let's say you really have finished drawing your track segment and you want to draw another one, you're right it won't be connected because you're starting a new track segment. If you want to join these two (or more) segments together, select the range of points you want to make into one long segment (or Ctrl-A to select the whole track) and then choose "Range -> Merge track segments" from the menu.

I hope that explanation helps?

Gnlfz007 commented 3 years ago

Excellent! Of course this helps!

I wonder if other newbies don't have the same problems as me. The handling is very bizarre compared to other common GUI applications. However, I understand that the actualization would be a very big task, probably too big for an open source project without full-time maintainers.

It would help a lot to provide the information given above "more explicit" in the documentation. I was about to drop gpsprune just because of this devastating user experience. Now I can use it and the features are awesome.

activityworkshop commented 3 years ago

Great, I'm glad to hear I was able to help you understand this. You're welcome.

I don't think the handling is "very bizarre" as you claim, because pressing the "Delete" key always deletes the currently selected point, and this consistency (actions do what you expect after you have learnt them) is a very important part of usability. If you have suggestions of alternative ways in which this track drawing could be done, or specific "common GUI applications" which do this line segment handling in another way, I would welcome them.

About documentation, yes of course. The drawing of segments is covered in section 11.6 "Creating a series of points" in the user guide, and the merging of track segments is described in section 9.7 "Joining track segments together". Perhaps you don't have a user guide, that's fine, but I think you'll agree that you got a helpful answer to your question fairly quickly anyway.

activityworkshop commented 3 years ago

no response to the question about which "common GUI applications" handle segment drawing differently, so closing.