As time is approaching the release of GNOME 49, I thought I should probably put together a small recap post covering some of the new things in Maps.
Metro Station Symbols
The map style now supports showing localized symbols for rail- and metro stations (relying on places being tagged with reference to the networks' entry in Wikidata.
Highway Symbols in Place Details
The existing code for showing custom highways shields in the map view (based on code from the OpenStreetMap Americana project) has been extended to expose the necessary bits to use it more generally as icon surfaces in a GtkImage widget. So now custom shields are shown in place details when clicking on a road label.
Adwaita Shortcuts Dialog
The keyboard shortcuts help dialog was ported by Maximiliano to use AdwShortcutsDialog, improving adaptivity.
Showing OSM Account Avatars in OSM Account Dialog
If a user has set up OAuth for an OpenStreetMap account, and has set a personal profile picture in their OSM account this is now shown in place of the generic „face“ icon.
And speaking of editing points-of-interests, the edit dialog has been compacted a bit to better accomodate smaller screen sizes.
This screenshot also showcases the (fairly) new mobile form-factor emulation option in the GTK inspector.
Softer Labels
Some smaller adjustments has also been made to the map style, such as using slightly softer color for the place labels for towns and cities rather than pitch black (or bright white for dark mode).
Marker Alignments
Thanks to work done by Corentin Noël for libshumate 1.5, the center point for map markers can now be adjusted.
This means the place markers in Maps can now actually point to the actually coordinate (e.g. having the “tip of the needle” at the actual location).
Updating the Highway Shields Defintions
And finally of the last changes before the release was updating the definition for custom highway shields from OpenStreetMap Americana. So now, among others we support shields for national and regional highways in Argentina.
And that's some of the highlights from the 49 release cycle!
