TAHO.EXE                                                                                12.Jul. 2010

 

Preface

 

Taho.exe is a program to make bigger maps out of the 256*256 pixel tiles of OpenStreetmap, so that these can be used by GPS - programs as for example Glopus. For each program different sizes are best and in addition to the graphic file they also need calibration files to tell them which map is for which area. These calibration files are different from one program to the other.

Taho.exe was originally a graphic front-end for taho.pl. It was used as a link between that and <http://www.openstreetmap.org/export/>. The new version works now without taho.pl and is thereby easier to install and more flexible. Hopefully taho.pl will be integrated into the above mentioned export-site soon, so that this program will be useless. Since OSM-Mapper often need both an unfinished OSM-Map and a finished one like the one from google, Taho.exe can also read a URL produced by <http://sdsnetz.de/glopus/> (This page is in German only).

From Version 2.02 on 8Bit PNGs can be created too, as did taho.pl. So it should work with OZI again.

 

Installation:

 

You just need to unzip the file anywhere. For the Help to work you should leave this file in the docu-folder.

 

Usage:

 

1.: Language

At the moment the program and help-files exist in English, German and French. The multilingual texts are stored in taho_lang.html. To correct errors just change the file for example with  OpenOfficeWriter. To add a new language you have to do the following steps:

  1. 1.Add a new column 

  2. 2.Put the name of that language in the top field of that column.  

  3. 3.In the second field put the ID of that language as on: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd318693(v=VS.85).aspx> You can either use the ID of  the column “Prim.lang. Identifier“ or the one under “Locale identifier“. The last makes only sense if you add more than one national version for the same language  

  4. 4.For the selection of the language you also have to add a line with the names of the new language in all existing languages. If for example you want to add Spanish as a 4th language add the following line : 

IDD_TAHO_DIALOG(IDC_LANG):4

L

4

0x660456

 

Spanisch

Spanish

espagnol

  1. As in all lines the first field is not important, but the Line number in the 3rd and the ID in the 4th is. As the ID could change in a later version, check it with the other language-lines if it does not works.  

  2. 5.In the remaining field of the new column put the translated texts. The ID STRING_TABLE(IDS_HLPFILE) is something special, it is not used to translate a normal text, but it contains the file-name of the help-file of that language. So in the above mentioned case if you translated the help-file into Spanish under the name ayuda.pdf put that name there, if you didn't translated it and want to get the English version instead,  add readme.pdf there. 

 

2.:Coordinates:

If you start taho.exe not only the program window´ll open, but also your standard browser displaying <http://www.openstreetmap.org/export/>. There you can select the desired area. To copy the so selected coordinates to the other window you can of cause type them in, copy them one by one, but easier is to use the  HTML-Link, which you´ll get when you select the Export-Format „Embeddable HTML“. Copy this to the last edit-field in the Area-part, then click on “get from URL“ and the coordinates and the zoom-level will be extracted. If this does not works as expected, probably the copying did not worked well. This was a problem with some older Versions of Mozilla.  Alternatively it is also possible to use the URL you get after selecting the area on <http://sdsnetz.de/glopus/> and press “Glopusdateien erzeugen“. This way it is easy to get the same maps from both OSM and Google-maps.

3. Size, bit/pixel and zoom level:

size determines the size of the individual maps. There are 2 special cases:

  1. 1.free: here the whole area will be saved in one graphic file. The maximum size of this will probably depend on your computer. This mode is not intended to be used with one of the GPS-programs but to just get a map of an area or for UI-View. 

  2. 2.None: no maps will be produced, this is only a download for the original tiles. There are some programs which use these tiles directly without calibration files.  

Taho.pl uses 2 different zoom levels. Taho.exe only the one you know from the OSM-maps.

You can select more than one zoom level.

You can choose between 8, 24 or 32 bit/pixel. They all have advantages and disadvantages. 32Bits is the internal format, so no extra transformation is needed, therefore it is the fastest to export, but it is not supported by Ozi. 24Bits is almost as fast as 32bit,and it is supported by Ozi. 8Bit might take some time on slow computers, but it produces much smaller files.

 

4a. source

Here you can select the map version. Since the URLs do sometimes change they can be loaded from a taho file. If you want to do same changes your self export such a file first to have the right syntax and change it then with an editor. Defsrc.taho will be read automatic so put this file under that name in a sub-folder \DYJ\OSM under “My Documents”. With “Load settings” you can read any such file. “Update source” searches on

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Taho#Tiles_sources

source for a link to an dersrc.taho and downloads this. This way any body can upload such a file somewhere and change the link even if I' am not available to put a new file on my site.

 

4b. Cache validity

Here you can define after how many days the map-tiles (the 256*256 maps downloaded from the tile-server) will be downloaded again. Until then taho´ll first look if the file is already in the tah-folder and use this local version.

 

5. Output Directory

If Auto is selected the program automatically determines a folder depending on the selected source. Alternatively you can determine the output directory manually.

 

6. Calibration files

Besides the maps you´ll probably need calibration files. Since there is not one universal format you can select here the one you need. There are different Worldfiles, the one created here is for "WGS 84 /World Mercator" EPSG 3395.

 

7. names

If you want you can now use map-names which include not numbers but coordinates. In contrast to taho.pl the zoom level in the name is now the one of the OSM-maps used, independent of the map-size. If this is a problem for some program please tell me.

 

8. make maps

At last this creates the maps and calibration-files. To speed this up the program´ll start 4 tasks parallel.

 

 

9. OSMBugs

Here you can download the OSMBugs for the selected area. This can also be done on <http://openstreetbugs.appspot.com/>  but there are three problems:

This site somehow reduces the number of bugs depending on the zoom-level.

The Texts are often very long, so the make the maps unreadable. Therefore you can select here that instead of the full text only a number will be shown and the full text is saved in a separate file.

Not all Programs can use gpx Files as POI-File. For example Glopus needs asc-files. So until now you can choose between gpx and ask if your program needs still an other format tell me.

 

10. setting

here you can save and load the settings. If you save them under the default name offered they´ll be automatically loaded at the program-start. These files can also be used as program-parameters. So if you tell windows to always load *.taho with it, you just need to double-click on one of this files to run the program with these parameters. This way you can load both types of taho-Files, the one with coordinates,... and the one with the source-URLs (s. 4a)  To write the later use the export button in source.

 

Legal matter and availability:

This program is under the GPL V3 License.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

 

Older Versions were under the creative commons License, but since the actual Versions includes a lot from taho.pl which is under GPL I preferred to change the license.

 

The source code should be available at the same point as the program, but maybe only some days later. If not check:.

http://www.dimitri-junker.de/html/openstreetmap.html

But I can´t guarantee, that there you´ll get the actual version.

 

History since version 2.06

 

2.8 from

Taho is now multilingual

change: Taho ignored the highest zoom-level of each renderer

change:  default.taho and defsrc.taho are now written in “My Documents” in a sub-folder “DYJ\OSM“ If there is nothing yet it tries to copy an older version out of the program-folder.

 

2.7 from 22.Apr.10

small changes of the Dialogue

New: Export-size free. S. 2.
New: Calibrations-File for UI-View

Change: when downloading in the mode size=none the real file names are shown.

 

Dimitri Junker