Midsommer Maps

 As tradition has it, it's about time for the (Northern Hemisphere) summer update on the happenings around Maps!

About dialog for GNOME Maps 49.alpha development

 

Bug Fixes 

 Since the GNOME 48 release in March, there's been some bug fixes, such as correctly handling daylight savings time in public transit itineraries retrieved from Transitous. Also James Westman fixed a regression where the search result popover wasn't showing on small screen devices (phones) because of sizing issues.

 

More Clickable Stuff

More symbols can now be directly selected in the map view by clicking/tapping on there symbols, like roads and house numbers (and then also, like any other POI can be marked as favorites).

 

Showing place information for the AVUS motorway in Berlin

 And related to traffic and driving, exit numbers are now shown for highway junctions (exits) when available.

 

Showing information for a highway exit in a driving-on-the-right locallity

Showing information for a highway exit in a driving-on-the-left locallity

 Note how the direction the arrow is pointing depends on the side of the road vehicle traffic drives in the country/territoy of the place…

Also the icon for the “Directions” button shows a “turn off left” mirrored icon now for places in drives-on-the-left countries as an additional attention-to-detail.

 

Furigana Names in Japanese

Since some time (around when we re-designed the place information “bubbles”) we show the native name for place under the name translated in the user's locale (when they are different).

As there exists an established OpenStreetMap tag for phonetic names in Japanese (using Hiragana), name:ja-Hira akin to Furigana (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furigana) used to aid with pronounciation of place names. I had been thinking that it might be a good idea to show this when available as the dimmed supplimental text in the cases where the displayed name and native names are identical, and the Hiragana name is available. E.g. when the user's locale is Japanese and looking at Japanese names.  For other locales in these cases the displayed name would typically be the Romaji name with the Japanese full (Kanji) name displayed under it as the native name.

So, I took the opportunity to discuss this with my college Daniel Markstedt, who speaks fluent Japanese and has lived many years in Japan. As he like the idea, and demo of it, I decided to go ahead with this!

 

Showing a place in Japanese with supplemental Hiragana name

 

Configurable Measurement Systems

Since like the start of time, Maps has  shown distances in feet and miles when using a United States locale (or more precisely when measurements use such a locale, LC_MEASUREMENT when speaking about the environment variables). For other locales using standard metric measurements.

Despite this we have several times recieved bug reports about Maps not  using the correct units. The issue here is that many users tend to prefer to have their computers speaking American English.

So, I finally caved in and added an option to override the system default.

 

Hamburger menu

 

Hamburger menu showing measurement unit selection

Station Symbols

One feature I had been wanted to implement since we moved to vector tiles and integrated the customized highway shields from OpenStreeMap Americana is showing localized symbols for e.g. metro stations. Such as the classic “roundel” symbol used in London, and the ”T“ in Stockholm.

 

After adding the network:wikidata tag to the pre-generated vector tiles this has been possible to implement. We choose to rely on the Wikidata tag instead of the network name/abbreviations as this is more stable and names could risk getting collitions with unrelated networks having the same (short-) name.

 

U-Bahn station in Hamburg

Metro stations in Copenhagen

Subway stations in Boston

S-Bahn station in Berlin

 

 

  This requires the stations being tagged consitently to work out. I did some mass tagging of metro stations in Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen. Other than that I mainly choose places where's at least partial coverage already.

 

If you'd like to contribute and update a network with the network Wikidata tag, I prepared to quick steps to do such an edit with the JOSM OpenStreetMap desktop editor.

 

Download a set of objects to update using an Overpass query, as an example, selecting the stations of Washing DC metro

 

[out:xml][timeout:90][bbox:{{bbox}}];

(

     nwr["network"="Washington Metro"]["railway"="station"];

     );

    (._;>;);

    out meta;

 

JOSM Overpass download query editor

 

 

 Select the region to download from

Select region in JOSM

 

Select to only show the datalayer (not showing the background map) to make it easier to see the raw data.

Toggle data layers in JOSM

 Select the nodes.

Show raw datapoints in JSOM

 

Edit the field in the tag edit panel to update the value for all selected objects

Showing tags for selected objects

Note that this sample assumed the relevant station node where already tagged with network names (the network tag). Other queries to limit selection might be needed.

Also it could also be a good idea to reach out to local OSM communities before making bulk edits like this (e.g. if there is no such tagging at all in specific region) to make sure it would be aliged with expectations and such.

Then it will also potentially take a while before it gets include in out monthly vector tile  update.

When this has been done, given a suitable icon is available as e.g. public domain or commons in WikimediaCommons, it could be bundled in data/icons/stations and a definition added in the data mapping in src/mapStyle/stations.js.

 

And More…

One feature that has been long-wanted is the ability to dowload maps for offline usage. Lately precisely this is something James Westman has been working on.

It's still an early draft, so we'll see when it is ready, but it already look pretty promising.

 

Showing the new Preferences option

 

 

  

Preference dialog with dowloads

Selecting region to download

 

Entering a name for a downloaded region

  

Dialog showing dowloaded areas

    

 

And that's it for now! 

 

 

Maps and GNOME 48

 

 

In a few days it's time for the GNOME 48 release.

So it's time to make a wrap-up with the last changes in Maps for the next release.

 Redesigned Route Markers

One issue that has been addressed was that the old markers we used to mark the start and end locations for routes, being filled and hollow circle icons respectively could be hard to tell apart and actually see which is which.

 

So now to mark the start we show a marker containing the icon representing the mode of transportation.

 

 The “walk” icon is also used for start of “walking legs” in public transit iteneraries, so this way it's getting a more consistent look.

 

 Redesigned User Location Marker

This was already covered in an earlier blog post, but it might be worth mentioning especially now that we once again have WiFi- and Celltower-based positioning again thanks to BeaconDB (it's already enabled by default in Fedora 41, and I think some other distros as well). We now have the redesigned location marker, using the system accent color.

 

 

Transitous Public Transit Routing Migrated to new API

Furthermore the Transitous support has been migrated to the MOTIS 2-based API. This has also been backported to the 47.x releases (as the old API has been retired).

Also public transit routing in Finland will start using Transitous from 48. As Digitransit has slated the retirement of their old OpenTripPlanner 1.x-based API from late April it seemed appropriate to start using Transitous for that region now.

 

Transitous Talk at FOSDEM 2025

When mentioning Transitous I also want to mention that the recording of mine, Felix Gündling's, and Jonah Brüchert's FOSDEM talk around Transitous is now available at:

 

https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4105-gnome-maps-meets-transitous-meets-motis/ 

So, please enjoy this, and all the other improvements in GNOME 48 when you grab it! 😎

Pre-FOSDEM Maps wrap-up

 As I've done some times previous years, I thought it would be appropriate to give a bit of a status update on goings on with regards to Maps before heading for this year's FOSDEM

Refreshed Location Marker

One of the things that landed since the December update are the new revamped location markers

The marker now uses the system accent color, and sports a “torch” indicating the current heading (when known).

And the circle indicating approximate accuracy of the location now has an outer contour.

And on these notes, I would also like to take the opportunity to mention the BeaconDB project (https://beacondb.net/) with the goal of building a community-sourced wireless positioning database. It is compatible the now-defunct Mozilla Location Service (MLS) and works as a drop-in-replacement with GeoClue.

Improved Visuals for Public Transit Routes Lists

The “badges” showing line numbers/names for public transit journeys, and markers for shown on the map when selecting a trip has been improved to avoid some odd label alignments and better looking contours (on lower contrast against light or dark background). The labels are now drawn directly using GSK instead of piggy-backing on a GtkLabel, doing some Cairo drawing on top of that. One additional benefit here is that it also gets rid of some of the remaining usages of the GdkPixbuf APIs (which will be gone in a future GTK 5).

 

Transitous Move to MOTIS 2

On the subject of transit, Transitous has now migrated to the new MOTIS 2 API. And consequently the support in Maps has been updated to use the new API (this is also backported to the stable 47.3 release).

The new API is easier to use, and more in-line with the internal data types in Maps, so the code was also a bit simpler. Also now with the new API we get the walking instructions directly from MOTIS instead of using GraphHopper to compute walking  “legs”. This has made searching for routes in Maps quite a bit faster as well.

FOSDEM

And when talking about FOSDEM, me, Felix Gündling, and Jonah Brüchert will host a talk about Transitous in the “Railways and Open Transport” devroom (K.6.401) on Sunday @ 16:30 CET

https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4105-gnome-maps-meets-transitous-meets-motis/

So maybe see you in FOSDEM!

Christmas / Winter / End-of-the-year Holidays Maps 2024 Yearly Wrap-up

In line with traditions, it's time for the yearly end-of-the year Maps blog post!

There's been some quite nice happenings this year when it comes to Maps (and the underlaying libshumate, our map widget library).

Vector Map Enabled by Default

The biggest change, by large that's happened in 2024 is that we finally did the switch to client-side rendered vector tiles with all the benefits this brings us:

• A “GNOME-themed” map style
• Properly support dark mode
• Localized labels for places (countries, towns, and so on…)
• POI icons can now be directly clicked on the map, bringing up information of place
  

 

More Use of Modern libadwaita Widgets

Works has continued replacing the old deprecated GtkDialog instances, instead using libadwaita's new dialogs, which also has the benefit of being adaptive for small screen sizes. Right now the only remaining instance of the old dialog type is the sharing “Send to” dialog.

Since the 47 release, the OSM POI editing dialog has received a refreshed look-and-feel based on Adwaita widgets, designed by Brage Fuglseth, and initial draft implementation by Felipe Kinoshita.

More Visual Improvements

Also since the September release, some more UI refinements have been made.

The action of starring a place now has an accopanying animation to help give a visual clue of the change.

The headerbar icon for showing the menu listing stored favorites now uses the same icon as GNOME Web (Epiphany), the “books on a libray shelf“ icon.

Spinner widgets (for showing progress) has been updated to the new Adwaita variant with a refreshed design.

And the toggle buttons for selecting routing mode (walk, bike, car, transit) now uses the new Adwaita ToggleGroup icon buttons.

Public Transit Routing Using Transitous

I have mentioned the Transitous previously and since 47.0 Maps uses Transitous to provide public transit directions for regions that weren't already covered by our existing plugins and their provided regions.

During the last few months works has progressed on an updated version of MOTIS (the backend used by Transious) that will give better performance, among otheres.

Maps will also soon transition to the new API when Transitous switches over to it.

And speaking of Transitous and MOTIS.

At FOSDEM 2025 me, Felix Gündling, and Jonah Brüchert will give a presentation of MOTIS, Transitous, and the integration into Maps.

https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4105-gnome-maps-meets-transitous-meets-motis/

 

And until next time, happy holidays!

Maps and GNOME 47

 

As it's now aproaching mid-September and the autumn release of GNOME, so is there also a new release of Maps approaching for GNOME 47.

 

Switch to Vector-based Map

The biggest change since last release is that we now use the vector-based map by default  and the old raster map has also been retired since we wanted to move forward with things like enabling, and relying on clickable POIs directly in the map view so we could the remove the old tedious “What's here?” context menu doing a reverse geocoding to get details about a place (which is also a bit hit-and-miss with regards to how close to where you point the actual result is).

 

Apart from this other benefits we get (and this has already been mentioned in earlier posts)  localized names (when tagged in OpenStreetMap) and finally a proper dark mode with our new GNOME map style.

Light (default) theme variant of the map in 47

Dark theme variant of the map in 47

Redesigned Search Bar

The “explore” button to open the search for nearby POIs by category menu has now been integrated into the entry to avoid a theme issue when using the linked button style where the rounded corners disappears on the “other side” when the results popover is showing.

 

Search bar with explore button

 This also looks a bit sleeker I think…

Improved Public Transit Routing

Public transit routing is now using the Transitous project (https://transitous.org) to provide transit routing for new regions. And as this is a crowd sourcing initiativ you can also help out by adding additional missing GTFS feeds to the project and it should automatically get supported by Maps.

For the time being, the regions we already supported by third-party APIs (such as Resrobot for Sweden, and OpenData.ch for Switzerland) will still use those providers to avoid possible regressions. It also gives us some leeway to improve MOTIS (the backend used by Transitous). The implementation in Maps also lacks e.g. support for specifying via locations.

 

Showing some travel itinerary options in Prague

Showing a sample of an itinerary from Lund, Sweden to Hamburg, Germany

Showing a sample of an itinerary in Denver, Colorado

 Updated Highway Shield Localizations

Thanks to the latest updates by the OSM Americana project (https://github.com/osm-americana/openstreetmap-americana) we now have some refinements in highway shield rendering.

French departmental routes (D-roads)

Turkish national D-roads

Some changes had to be made to our internal shield rendering library (we couldn't use the OSM Americana implementation directly, as we had to implement ours using Cairo rendering and so on) to support the new convenience shortcut for a “pill” shield shape, and also being able to define hard-coded route references “ref” directly in the shield definition rather than getting from the tile data.

Rochester Inner Loop in Rochester, New York, using a fixed “LOOP” reference label

 And on that note, a funny bug I discovered during some testing is that we currently always assume the “pointsUp” attribute in the shield definitions would always default to true when not explicitly set, while the OSM Americana code has different defaults depending on the following shape. So specifically for the “fishhead” shape it should actually be false when not set. I guess this is a bit odd to assume different values depending on following JSON elements, but…

 

Highway shields in New Zeeland

 It was a bit funny I discovered this bug when “browsing around“ in New Zeeland considering Northern Hemisphere-centric jokes about people “Down-under” walking upside-down 😀. But this actually also affects some highways in the US…

 

I guess this should be fixed before the 47.0 release.

 

And that's that for this time!