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[closed] Track Line Thickness and Icon Sizing

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Yemble
Posts: 333
Joined: Sun Apr 28, 2013 5:02 pm

[closed] Track Line Thickness and Icon Sizing

Post by Yemble »

I'm new to AQ, but I find the line thickness of routes to be a little too wide, compared to other mapping apps. It would be nice if this was configurable, along with the colour.

Also, I find the way that icons scale to be a little odd, to say the least. When using, say, a Red dot icon on the OSGB 1:50K / 1:25K maps, the size is about right when the 1:50K map is fully scaled out. However, as you scale in, the dot icon actually reduces in size eventually becoming tiny when fully scaled in on the 1:25K map. This seems counter-intuitive to me, as I would have expected the icon to increase in size (or stay the same size)... but certainly not to reduce in size.

Can this be corrected in some way... possibly with some kind of icon scaling setting. Back Country Navigator has something similar, whereby you tell it the zoom level at which the icon should be displayed at its maximum size. The BCN solution is a bit quirky, but preferable to how AQ works currently, IMHO.

On the subject of icons, it would be nice if you could import custom icon bitmaps into AQ and then reference them within waypoints and GPX files. This is a standard feature of Memory-Map and ViewRanger.
Psyberia-Support
Site Admin
Posts: 6406
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2010 9:41 pm

Re: Track Line Thickness and Icon Sizing

Post by Psyberia-Support »

Hi again,
There is a global setting "Display size" under the "Landmarks" section in the preferences window, that allows you to change the overall size of all landmarks: the size of the points for landmarks, the thickness for routes and tracks. Maybe it can help right now. I will however have a look at the ability to change it for each landmark.

Concerning the icons, are you sure they are reducing while zooming in?
Icons are displayed at there original sizes for each map levels at the zoom factor of x1.0 (you can display the current zoom factor from the map sub-menu, "Map scale" option).
When you zoom in for a given map level, the icon should also zoom in identically, since it's actually "painted" over the map level.
Then, at some point, the next level is loaded and all the map refreshed. At this time, the icon is painted over the new level.
Let me know if I'm not clear enough or if I'm mis-understood you.

The idea of being able to import custom icons is really good and quite easy to add, so I'll do it as soon as possible.
Best regards
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Yemble
Posts: 333
Joined: Sun Apr 28, 2013 5:02 pm

Re: Track Line Thickness and Icon Sizing

Post by Yemble »

Ah... I didn't realise that the Display Size setting affected line thickness as well as POI size. These should be separate IMHO. I have mine set to Very Big in order to try and increase the icon size when zoomed in, but it does not appear to help much. Yes, I am certain that the incon sizes are actually reducing when zooming in on the GBOS topo maps - it is very strange! For example, the Red Dot icon, which is a decent size on the 1:50K map fully scaled out, reduces to a tiny dot on the 1:25K map fully scaled in. Try it for yourself... ;-)

I've had a play and concluded that Small gives the ideal line size, but NOT the ideal icon size.

On the subject of custom icons, I would suggest having an Icons folder and then automatically import any icon file (BMP, PNG, JPG, etc.) found there. Then internally, reference them by their file name (without extension), so that they can be associated with landmarks and imported GPX files. On the AQ icon selection menu, just create an additional category, Custom Icons, at the bottom of the list and include any found icons in there. you might want to restrict the dimensions of imported icons to filter out anything silly, like a 24Mpix photo!
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