OpenOrienteering Mapper

OpenOrienteering Mapper

Original author(s)	Thomas Schöps
Developer(s)	Kai Pastor, OpenOrienteering Development Team
Initial release	February 2012 (2012-02)
Stable release	0.6.1 / February 10, 2016 (2016-02-10)
Preview release	0.6.20160401 / April 1, 2016 (2016-04-01)
Written in	C++, C++11, Qt
Engine
Operating system	Linux, OS X, Windows, Android(beta), Android-x86(beta)
Platform	x86, x86-64, ARM
Available in	15 languages
Type	vector graphics editor, GIS, DTP
License	GNU GPL v3
Website	openorienteering.org

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OpenOrienteering Mapper (also known as OOMapper and OOM) – free and open-source cross-platform software for cartography on orienteering maps, editing them, and preparing them for professional publishing; functionality is similar to GIS OCAD, Merkaartor, JOSM, QGIS, desktop publishing and vector graphics editors Adobe Illustrator, Scribus, CorelDraw, sK1, and Inkscape. The program is currently part of the OpenOrienteering project.

History

In the group of software for creating orienteering maps, from 1980 to the present day, there was a monopoly of the commercial proprietary GIS OCAD. In recent years, the number of users of the OCAD 8 demo version, who were dissatisfied by the very high price and unfriendly user interface of the program, without support for Linux and OS X, increased, and at the same time, the need for an alternative arose. There were some attempts to create alternative tools, but they could not compete with the latest freeware and the outdated OCAD 6 at that time. Here is a list of projects that in some way tried to make free alternatives:

• Addons for Mapnik:
  • In 2009, Oliver O'Brien launched the online map service OpenOrienteeringMap (OOMap), based on OpenStreetMap data and his own rendering style for Mapnik, which gave a look somewhat similar to orienteering maps and added the possibility to export selected regions to PDF.
• Addons for Inkscape:
  • In 2010, Jon Eaton created an addon named O-scape specifically for Inkscape, which in some situations was used as an alternative to the similar addon MapStudio, created earlier specifically for Adobe InDesign.
• Addons for JOSM:
  • In 2011, Kai Pastor created the Print Plugin for JOSM, which allows printing OSM data in a custom style directly from JOSM in offline mode without dependence on any third-party rendering applications.
• Addons for Maperitive:
  • In 2011, Jens Kastensson adapted a rendering style for the Maperitive renderer application, which uses OSM data as input, for rendering in a style based on the ISOM standard.
  • In 2014, Hadrien Devillopoix adapted the style created by Jens Kastensson specifically for the ISMTBOM standard.

But none of these addons helped create a truly good resulting map that could be approved by the IOF for ISOM standards.

In 2012, German programmer Thomas Schöps started the OpenOrienteering project with the goal of creating free and open-source software for orienteering maps, as an alternative to OCAD 8. Later, Kai Pastor, Peter Curtis, and several other volunteers participated in the development, testing, and translation of the interface into other languages. This is the story of how the OpenOrienteering Development Team was created, which initially consisted of 7, and later 15 participants.

On July 13, 2012, the first public demonstration of OOMapper took place at the International Conference on Orienteering Maps (ICOM 2012), held in Lussana (Switzerland).

The main repository was initially located at http://sourceforge.net/p/oorienteering/. However, in June 2015, due to problems and policies of the hoster SourceForge, the maintainers began migrating the project infrastructure to GitHub. Currently, the main repository of the OpenOrienteering project is located at http://github.com/openorienteering. The main developer since v0.6.0 is Kai Pastor, who has experience in similar projects and participated in the development of other open-source projects, such as JOSM and Scribus.

As of April 1, 2016, the OpenOrienteering Development Team consisted of at least 28 contributors.

Mobile version with touch-input support

The first requests for a mobile version of OOMapper were published in November 2012. The main goal was porting to mobile devices with Android, and this required adding touch-input support and a special mobile UI layout. On April 2, 2014, the first beta version build of OOMapper for Android was presented.

At the time of the v0.6.1 release, mobile builds still had 'beta' status and were not recommended for serious mapping projects.

Symbol sets

The main repository of OOMapper currently includes several symbol sets, developed according to the listed mapping standards:

• International Standard for Orienteering Maps (IOF ISOM)
  • ISOM (1:15000, 1:10000)
  • ISSOM (1:5000, 1:4000)
  • ISSkiOM (1:15000, 1:10000, 1:5000)
  • ISMTBOM (1:20000, 1:10000, 1:7500)
• Symbol sets translated to other languages or with regional specifics:
  • ISOM and ISSOM with Czech translation
  • ISOM and ISSOM with Finnish translation
• Upcoming new International Specification for Orienteering Maps ISOM 201X (planned for release in 2016)
  • ISOM 201X (download from link)

Use of 3rd-party libraries

At the current stage of development, OOMapper uses and/or includes different external libraries for some special functions:

• PROJ.4 – for georeferencing.
• Clipper Library – for polygon operations.
• Zlib – for compression and decompression operations.
• Qt – for the application GUI.
• GDAL – for importing different geospatial formats; the latest test build v.0.620160401 has initial support for this library.

File Formats

One of the main goals of this project is full support for the file format used in GIS OCAD version 8, as the most popular and widely used for orienteering maps, which is also officially supported by the International Orienteering Federation (IOF).

OCAD file format

OCAD (*.ocd) – a number of open binary file formats, the specifications of which were published for free by OCAD AG Company.

OMAP file format

This is a proprietary open and free file format developed by Thomas Schöps specifically for OOMapper, which is in some ways similar to OSM XML from OpenStreetMap, but with full support for the OOMapper API. There are several versions of this format:

• *.omap – minimal form, which is difficult for humans to read (single-stroke XML).
• *.xmap – verbose form with good XML formatting specifically for human readability.

There was also a special binary form of this format up to v0.5.0, but it was later discontinued. However, it is still possible to open the binary format and resave it in XML-based form.

OSM file format

Support for the OSM data format in OOMapper was added from v0.5.3, but in v0.6.1 it was still only possible to import limited geometry from OSM XML. Currently, the test build v.0.6.20160401 has an initial implementation of a new mechanism for OSM import using the GDAL library.

Supported file formats

Opening (for editing)

• OpenOrienteering Mapper (*.omap *.xmap)
• OCAD up to version 12 (*.ocd)
• Geospatial vector data (*.shp *.shx)
• OpenOrienteering Mapper pre-0.5 (*.omap)

Import (with limitations)

• All file formats that can be opened (see paragraph above)
• GPS tracks and waypoints (*.gpx)
• AutoCAD DXF (*.dxf)
• OpenStreetMap Data XML (*.osm)

Saving

• OpenOrienteering Mapper (*.omap *.xmap)
• OCAD version 8 (*.ocd)

Export

• Raster image (.png *.bmp *.tif *.tiff *.jpg *.jpeg)
• Portable Document Format (PDF)

Templates

• All types of raster graphics
• Scalable Vector Graphics (*.svg *.svgz)

Positioning

OOMapper is a complex cartographic DTP and WYSIWYG editor for orienteering maps with full support for OCAD file formats, including IOF ISOM standard symbol sets, professional CMYK and spot colors, ready for production PDF and professional printing; adding extensive painting features is not a priority for the maintainers.

Functionality

Symbols

• Point (waypoint)
• Line (straight and Bézier curves)
• Area (filled with color or pattern)
• Text (with alignment and font face settings)
• Combined

Colors

• CMYK
• Spot
• RGB

Georeferencing

• Coordinate system settings
  • Local (as printed on paper)
  • UTM
  • Gauss-Krugger, datum Potsdam
  • PROJ.4 manual input
• Magnetic declination setting

Special features

• Tags for any map element (similar to how this is presented in GIS JOSM)
• Import maps into one another

OpenOrienteering open-source applications

1. Mapper – cartographic DTP application for orienteering maps.
2. CupCalculator – application for organizing orienteering competitions.
3. Contour Trace – application for tracing contours from raster images of map scans using the AutoTracer library.
4. Laserscan tool – application for visualizing LIDAR scanning point caches and converting them to readable images.
5. Betting – application based on PHP and MySQL for visualizing competition scores using data exported from SportSoftware.

Usage

The number of users of OOMapper increased after the first releases of the v0.5.x branch, and currently there is a short list of organizations that officially use this application:

• The International Orienteering Federation (IOF) already includes OOMapper in its list of recommended mapping software.
• The Orienteering Association of Western Australia (OAWA), a member organization of Orienteering Australia, recommends OOMapper for use in teaching orienteering in schools.
• The Oxford University Orienteering Club recommends OOMapper to its members.
• On April 24, 2014, notes about "Open Orienteering Mapper for Android" were published in "The West Midlander. Spring 2014", the newsletter of the Western Midland Orienteering Association (WMOA).
• On January 16–17, 2015, the OOMapper application was used by members of the International Orienteering Federation Map Commission (IOF MC) in Frankfurt (Germany), at their annual meeting on improvements to standards and specifications for orienteering maps known as ISOM.
• In April 2015, in Croatia, OOMapper was used to create an orienteering map of the city Buzet (cartographers: Dražen Tutić, Matjaž Štanfel) for the International tournament "BUZET SPRINT ORIENTEERING 2015", which was part of the 11th Conference of Cartography and Geoinformation. This map was used in the tournament on May 9, 2015, which was attended by IOF council member László Zentai.

Links

• Official site of OpenOrienteering Project
• OOMapper main repository
• Online Manual for OOMapper
• OpenOrienteering Ukraine - Ukrainian user group of OOMapper on Facebook.
• List of different software for orienteering on O-Wiki.net site Archived 2016-04-16 at the Wayback Machine

This article "OpenOrienteering Mapper" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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