Hello, I'm packaging CycloGraph for debian and I'd appreciate if some native english speaker reviews my package description. I also attached a draft of the user manual, whose first part might be useful if some more information is needed. Of course I'm available if something is not clear. Regards -- Federico Brega
CycloGraph User Manual Federico Brega, Pierluigi Villani 1 Introduction CycloGraph is an application born to let the cyclists visualize their routes and see how difficult they are. It is important to stress out that plotting the elevation of a path can be interesting also in other sports: i.e. running, hiking or even skiing. The goal of the application is to show the altitude and the slope along the route. The plot shall also be as elegant as possible. Many other softwares show a simple plot of the altitude but the graphics is essential although some of them implements other functionalities. CycloGraph aims to be great to produce graphically appealing images to be shown on web pages, journals or to document the stages of a race. 1.1 Features Manual insertion The purpose of the application is to draw a graph; to do this a source of informations is needed. The application can be feed manually, which is very straightforward but soon becomes tiring because the user insert every single information which he previously wrote down when he did the trip. GPS tracks GPS devices are very common nowadays, their problem is the very high rate of recording. CycloGraph allows to import a track recorded and stored in gpx (GPs eXchange format). If your GPS device produces files in another format you may use Gps Babel (www.gpsbabel.org ) to convert it to gpx. Note that GPS tracks are usually not enough to produce an high quality plot because they contains a lot of points, but only a few really add some information to the plot. CicloGraph tries to import a reasonable number of points, but the best results can be achieved by importing more points than needed and then manually deleting the ones that are not relevant. You may want to edit some point adding a name as well. Files produced by other applications Interoperability is important and CycloGraph permits to open files saved by other applications.Supported formats are: • GPS eXchange Format(.gpx) • Keyhole Markup Language (.kml) • Salitaker (.sal) • Training Center xml (.tcx) • Ciclotour (.crp) • Ciclomaniac (.xml and .txt) Kml and draw on map Importing a slope from a kml file is a unique feature. This is a complex process because a kml file doesn't contain the altitudes so they are downloaded from an Internet service. Many services can be chosen, each one has different performances in therm of resolution and and download speed. Google Earth (earth.google.com) let you create a route and save it in kml. CycloGraph embedds a tool to create a kml file by drawing a polyline on a map (Open Street Map or Google Maps). The same tool can also interface to Google Maps' directions. Note that this tool permits you to visualize how hard a slope is even if you have never been there. This is very useful in planning trip. Please note that using an automatic tool might lead to misleading results i.e. if two consecutive point are too distant the can miss a peak between them. On the other hand if they are too close the slope may be very inaccurate due to the resolution of the altitude data. 2 Basic usage 2.1 Start the application CycloGraph has many interfaces either graphical or command line. If you are a Windows user you're probably interested in the Qt 4 interface, because it is the only one which we support in the package for your platform. Note that all graphical interfaces have the same functionalities, the only difference is in some minor aesthetic detail. This is relevant if you are a Linux user since only Qt interface is officially supported on Windows and unofficially supported on Mac OS X. The same interface (i.e. Qt 4) looks different when used on different platforms so don't be confused if the screenshots look a bit different from what you see on your screen. Qt 4 The Qt interface uses the Qt4 framework to provide the graphic user interface. While for Windows packages Qt is the only interface available, for GNU/Linux there is also the GTK+ interface GTK+ The GTK+ interface has two versions, the first one uses the GTK+ 2.0 toolkit while the other one uses GTK+ 3.0 . Command Line This interface allow to run the application in a console, without the need of a graphical server. This is considered for experts not because it is hard to use but usually only “experts” use the command line. 2.2 Editing and empty file You can start creating a new slope by selecting the first element of the toolbar, alternatively selecting the element “New” on the File menu. You can add check-points selecting the “add check-point” on the toolbar or by pressing “+” from the keyboard. To modify one point select this on the list and than on the “ modify check-point” on the toolbar. You can also delete one or more points by selecting them on the list and then press “delete check-point” or “-”. 2.3 Show the plot To show the plot after you have created or loaded one slope, you have to press the “plot your slope” button in the toolbar. A new plot window will pop up showing the desired graph, drawn according to the settings on the Options>Preferences menu. If you want to change these settings you can use the menu of the plot window, these changes only affects the current plot window while the preferences settings are applied at the opening of every plot window. 2.3.1 Save the plot as Image You can save the image as seen on the new window to a file. Many file formats are supported but the most common are: • svg: It is a vectorial format, which means that can be zoomed without any artifact. • bmp: It is a raster format which means that changing the zoom level of the file will affect the quality of the image. No compression is used so the format is simple but the size is big. • png: It is a raster format with loose-less compression which means that the quality is not affected by the compression level. • jpeg: It is a raster format that degrades the quality with the level of compression, bu can achieve very small files. 3 Advanced Usage 4 Expert Usage 4.1 Command Line The command line interface exposes a subset of the features of the graphical interface. Many of them are not accessible because the console is not suitable for this use case i.e. drawing a path on map. Editing is not possible but more appropriate tools can be used instead, see Subsection [sub:Editing-csv]. When CycloGraph is invoked without any option the application will guess a suitable graphical interface. A specific graphical interface can be selected by means of an option. The complete and updated list of supported flags can be shown using the “--help” option. If no graphical interface is selected but a file is opened (using “--file=filename”) the application will run from commandline. This means that the slope will be plotted and printed in svg format in the standard output. If you want to save it you can simply use the output redirection operator of your shell (usually “>”). 4.2 Editing the CycloGraph csv file<sub:Editing-csv> Cyclograph csv files use ";" delimiter for fields in the same line. # line 1: slope informations, 6 fields 1. csv version 2. slope name 3. slope state 4. author 5. author's e-mail 6. comments # line 2,..,n: check points, 3 fields 1. distance 2. altitude 3. check point name
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