I have only started writing user manual and will describe most difficult things first. Please, be patient.
Androzic is first of all a map application. It uses raster maps in OziExplorer format. Each map consists of a specially encoded raster image and a supplementary calibration file. There are three major sources for a map image: computer rendering (like Open Street Map, Google Map, etc), scanned paper map (road atlases, military maps, aviation maps, etc) and sketch maps (hand drawn plans, photographed recreation plans, etc). Each map has a primary scale (MPP - meters per pixel in terms of OziExplorer). If you have several maps that cover specific coordinate Androzic chooses the map with the largest scale. But you can switch to any map you prefer.
You can zoom map using pinch gesture or by pressing and on a side panel. Androzic supports the following zooms: 1%, 2.5%, 5%, 7.5%, 10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%,125%, 150%, 175%, 200%, 250%, 300%, 400%, 500%.
If there is more than one map for a current location you can switch to preferred map by pressing (lesser scale) or (larger scale) on a side panel. The other way is to use menu: Maps→At cursor and select any map directly.
You can lock map view to your current location. This is called following mode. Position cross disappears and map automatically follows your movement. You can turn off following mode by pressing on a side panel and turn it back again by pressing . If your device has a pointing device (trackball, optical sensor, etc) then pressing it turns this mode on and off. Otherwise “stop following on drag” is enabled by default, you can change this behaviour in Androzic settings.
Waypoint represents a single place. At a minimum it has to have name and coordinates.
Waypoints are stored in files, each separate file is called waypoint set. Androzic always has a default waypoint set called myWaypoints. When you create new waypoints they automatically appear in this set. You can later move waypoint to another set in waypoint properties.
Androzic currently supports not all waypoint properties defined in OziExplorer. Supported properties so far:
Waypoint properties can be accessed in two ways:
This is the most commonly used way to create waypoints. When you select Add waypoint from menu waypoint is created at the current location (in following mode) or at a map center position.
You can create a new waypoint by specifying distance and bearing from some reference point. This reference can be current location or any other waypoint. Select Waypoints→Project new from menu to access this option.
Select Waypoints→New from menu to open blank waypoint properties view where you can manually specify all properties for a new waypoint.
Waypoint description is interpreted by Androzic as HTML. If you now HTML you can write it just in text edit box in advanced waypoint properties, or copy/paste it from some other location. Then your waypoint information can look as follows:
That particular waypoint description was created with much easier way: all waypoints where created in Google My Maps - it supports rich text edit of point description - and then imported via KML file.
Androzic supports custom marker icons but this is not enabled by default. To enable marker icons download mapicons.zip file from Androzic support web site and unzip it in Androzic application folder (configured in Settings). Application folder will now contain icons folder with more then 630 marker icons in it. You can remove unnecessary icons if this is too much for you. Next time you start Androzic you will be able to select marker icon in waypoint properties view.
These marker icons are originally published on http://mapicons.nicolasmollet.com/ by Nicolas Mollet under Creative Commons 3.0 BY-SA license. You can download updates or other styles from this site by yourself, just keep icons.dat file intact - it is part of Androzic, not icons collection.
You can use any icon set as marker icons if you like. Icons have to meet only two criteria:
Create icons folder under Androzic application folder (configured in Settings) or empty existing one. Copy your preferred icons in the icons folder. Create icons.dat text file in icons folder. File must contain one line with the following format:
X,Y,D
here X stands for horizontal pixel coordinate of an anchor in marker icon, Y stands for vertical pixel coordinate of an anchor, D stands for a waypoint name position relative to marker icon: 0 - top, 1 - right, 2 - bottom, 3 - left (name position will be supported in future releases).
Illustration of marker icon anchor:
Androzic has two navigation modes:
The second one can be considered an extension to the first one.
Navigation to waypoint is initiated by pressing Navigate button in waypoint description or selecting Navigate menu item in waypoint context menu. When navigating to waypoint distance, bearing and turn are displayed, as well as VMG and ETE. Line connecting your current location and target waypoint is drawn to ease your navigation. In this mode navigation never stops, you can cancel it through Navigation menu.
Route is simply the sequence of waypoints. Route has at least two waypoints - source and destination. Navigation therefore always begins from the second route waypoint. This gives us a concept of route leg (course). Given a course there comes out another navigation parameter: XTK - it is shown only in this mode. Total route distance left is also shown in this mode.
Navigation is proceeded to the next waypoint in two cases:
Navigation is stopped when you reach proximity distance from the destination (last) waypoint of the route.
Sometimes there is no way or no need to reach waypoint proximity distance. This is where traverse logic helps. Look at the illustration:
Let’s assume you are going from Turin to Strasbourg, it means that Strasbourg is an active route waypoint and Turin-Strasbourg is an active route leg. Passing Bern you decided to skip Strasbourg and go directly to Berlin. In this case you will never reach Strasbourg proximity and navigation will not switch to new route leg (Strasbourg-Berlin). This leg has a traverse - a line perpendicular to the leg and crossing source waypoint, it is drawn in red on illustration. As soon as you cross the traverse Androzic assumes that you wish to navigate along that leg and switches to the next route waypoint (Berlin in our case). This behavior can be turned off in Settings.
The horizontal situation indicator (commonly called the HSI) is an aircraft instrument that combines both the Direction and the Course Deviation Indicator display. It is one of the main instruments for navigation.
Application provides simplified look-alike HSI:
You can share location within a group. Locations are stored on a dedicated server so your device must provide data connectivity (e.g. GPRS or WiFi). Sharing group is identified by a session. To start sharing you have to specify the title of a session you want to join and your user identifier in application settings:
All users with the same session title will be in one group and see each other. That’s why it is essential to make this string unique and private, for example: tEam1543. After you have specified session and user you can start real sharing. On a side panel press to start sharing. If you are not alone in a group the tags of other users will appear after a while. Locations are updated in regular intervals specified in settings. If location of a specific user exceeds configured timeout then such user is considered lost and their tag becomes 50% transparent. When you want to stop sharing press on a side panel.
All locations are stored on server for 24 hours (cleaned hourly). It means that if you will resume session within 24 hours you will see tags from the previous session.