which svg symbols are needed?

[pommesschranke]

I googled for "ICAO Annex 4" and found Eleventh Edition, July 2009
(dcaa.trafikstyrelsen.dk:8000/icaodocs....)
starting on Page 145 (Appendix 2) all symbols have numbers.

So maybe here or in the wiki we can make a list which symbols we have
and which symbols that we'd like to have are still missing.

[Hooray]

good idea. I'd just suggest to send a heads-up to Michat, because he's been working on this recently.
First of all, we need symbols used by the Map dialog and by the hard-coded ND.
Gijs & Hyde can probably provide more info on missing symbols for the NavDisplay...

[Johan G]

Michat's symbols seems to be based on FAA's symbols (which without a doubt are PD), while I have an (incomplete) set of the ICAO symbols (nearly identical), which I have been extending yesterday and today.

Question though where will they be used? Both these sets are primarily for paper charts, but if I understand correctly they are used on electronic charts as well. FAA's and thus Michats symbols are a bit "bolder" and should be easier to read on a display, I think.

[Hooray]

Use will be primarily 1) Map dialog (canvas-based), 2) NavDisplay, 3) any other mapping/charting dialogs inside FG - such as the airport-selection dialog, or the route manager possibly

[Michat]

Michat's symbols seems to be based on FAA's symbols (which without a doubt are PD), while I have an (incomplete) set of the ICAO symbols (nearly identical), which I have been extending yesterday and today.

Interesting point that we are doing almost same work but with different org documents. What I found is that there are not regular symbols and those symbols designs and dimensions are not public standard. Also I found different icons in Jeppessen.

In some cases I found that if I design my own symbols I can get better reading in small sizes.

I recommend if you have another style (ICAO) than me (FAA), not to merge them. Also we have another symbols style suggested by D-Laser, so I'm confused for the high number of symbols and styles, but sure that we must not merge styles. In some cases I think is better to use our own style if we have a small map.

After telling that, I don't know how to resolve the situation in other way than heading the quest to complete different styles in separate branches with the huge amount of work....... I scare about results, in some cases some symbols will work better on mobile phones, other cases with our map (at that point I wonder if we could work pixel art techniques to get better result on very tiny conditions. Please, help with any idea.

Question though where will they be used? Both these sets are primarily for paper charts, but if I understand correctly they are used on electronic charts as well. FAA's and thus Michats symbols are a bit "bolder" and should be easier to read on a display, I think.

[Hooray]

it should not be a problem to support different sets of files (styles) if necessary - obviously, it would help if filenames were identical then, or if all images were combined in a single SVG file using identical lookup IDs.

[Johan G]

The thing with the ICAO document is that it is not really set in stone:

2.4.1
...
Note.---The size and prominence of symbols and the thickness and spacing of lines may be varied according to the scale and functions of the chart, with due regard to the importance they convey.

In other words, anything is fine even by the standard as long as symbols is legible and possible to read from charts and/or displays (which probably explains the diversity of symbols for each thing).

[Michat]

Exactly Johan G, you have hit the mark.

Also we have the quest that the colors seems to be TINT colors, in some cases I had to change opacity to hit good results. What I mean is that color has a kind of dependencies with the amount of tint (Saturation). In all cases I had to zoom out to check if the result is legible.

Following the good reference from D-Laser using Inkscape numbering symbols will be easy task. ( I hope). What I found on those Appendix is that colors seem to be slightly differents. LOL

For the FG internal map, I begin to suspect that we'll need our own custom pixel art and palette in order to get better results. Which means that the best way is doing try&test.


They call it "industry", so the only standard is the money, I suppose.

Still working on FAA Symbols. I'll report when finished. Still a lot to do, and having some problems with some crazy Inkscape anti-features. LOLII

For the FG internal custom symbols, we'll need to know how the symbols fights. LOLIII

[Hooray]

http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightGear_N ... as_Symbols

Hi Michat!
That looks really great - what exactly have you done there, is that just a passive preview, or did you literally add some menus to navigate through all symbols by modifying the original snippet ?

BTW: There's no need to manually colorize/scale/resize images, that can all be done procedurally by using Nasal/Canvas - so a single size and color should usually suffice - and we can also overlay multiple symbols automatically by using the z-index attribute for canvas groups.

What is the status regarding the symbols required to port the existing Map widget (ILS) ?
If those menus are not currently functional, we can help you make them functional by using Canvas Event Listeners

If you could post the SVG file, I am sure that Hyde, Philosopher or TheTom can commit it to $FG_ROOT, so that we can start using it - personally, I would prefer integrating it with out SymbolCache framework, so that people only need to request a certain symbol from the cache, instead of having to deal with SVGs directly

PS: If you have more symbols, you can use Tom's latest "scrollbar" widget to make the list scroll-able

[Michat]

[quote="Hooray"

Hi Michat!
That looks really great - what exactly have you done there, is that just a passive preview, or did you literally add some menus to navigate through all symbols by modifying the original snippet ? [/quote]

Thanks you. That just a passive preview, no menus added to navigate. Just testing colors.

BTW: There's no need to manually colorize/scale/resize images, that can all be done procedurally by using Nasal/Canvas - so a single size and color should usually suffice - and we can also overlay multiple symbols automatically by using the z-index attribute for canvas groups.

There are some symbols that have 2 sizes, because charts can use those sizes, I made those sizes for that, but understanding that those could be scaled in any time. I used colors in order to introduce my work in the best way to show it, no problem to change one color as a read from Hyde's message. Hoping z-index will managed for you via canvas, because all my work is made in one layer, I never use layers.

What is the status regarding the symbols required to port the existing Map widget (ILS) ?
If those menus are not currently functional, we can help you make them functional by using Canvas Event Listeners

What you see in this passive preview is mainly the IFR Navigation basic symbol set for the map widget, maybe we'll need more symbols but this is a basic set, if you need some more specific symbols that are missing just tell me. I didn't start dreaming an interface design (mock up) cause I don't know what are the functionalities you have in mind, I don't know about performance, I'm very conceited about readability-sizes and colors in order to have a good looking interface, however I'm asking to my MP friends feeding back about what they hate in the current map. Would be a dream to make some menus functional, only if the menu will be the best way to do it.
Yesterday night I dreamed a sweet interface, f11+f12+route-manager+fgmap, in a single canvas interface "navigation center". Just dreaming....
I think is better if you guys tell me what is the info you want to show, with the kind of your good code, good color/font selection, good use of space and resources we can make nice interfaces. If needed I can do some mock ups for your specific plan.

If you could post the SVG file, I am sure that Hyde, Philosopher or TheTom can commit it to $FG_ROOT, so that we can start using it - personally, I would prefer integrating it with out SymbolCache framework, so that people only need to request a certain symbol from the cache, instead of having to deal with SVGs directly

PS: If you have more symbols, you can use Tom's latest "scrollbar" widget to make the list scroll-able

Using Nasal console and your snippets for canvas was very tricky for me. Good to know that there is a scrollbar widget. The fact is that I have a lot of symbols, a lot especially those VFR.

I wish to know if could be possible to move a canvas window instance from point A to Point Be, just by click on it ? kind of side slider window..... moving from left to right.

Can somebody give me an email by private in order to send the initial files.

Cheers.

[Hooray]

Yesterday night I dreamed a sweet interface, f11+f12+route-manager+fgmap, in a single canvas interface "navigation center". Just dreaming...

I don't quite remember what exactly F11 and F12 are doing - but showing the route manager and a tiled map should be possible now, the MapStructure framework should contain most of the building blocks for displaying the route with its waypoints:


We would primarily need to use Tom's latest Nasal/HTTP bindings to download a mapserver image - but if I remember correctly, he also extended CanvasImage to directly support http URLs, so this could actually work "out of the box" now - I cannot currently run FG, but probably it's just 10 lines of Nasal code to show a tiled map as a background image now.

Regarding fonts, I'd suggest not to use any - font handling should normally also be handled by Canvas itself, unless the font/label doesn't change. Otherwise, it's better to leave it to the Nasal/Canvas code.

Using Nasal console and your snippets for canvas was very tricky for me. Good to know that there is a scrollbar widget. The fact is that I have a lot of symbols, a lot especially those VFR.

I haven't yet used the scrollbar, but I think Philosopher used it in his REPL interpreter - so it should be straightforward to extend the snippet to use a scrollbar for all images.

I wish to know if could be possible to move a canvas window instance from point A to Point Be, just by click on it ? kind of side slider window..... moving from left to right.

click the title bar and keep the mouse button clicked, you can then move the window around

[Hooray]

Here's some guidelines for people wanting to help with SVG images specifically for Canvas to avoid unnecessary work:

• please use transparent backgrounds
• no need to provide different labels/translations (can be done by Nasal/Canvas)
• no need to provide different scales of symbols (can be done by Nasal/Canvas!)
• no need to provide differently colored symbols (can be done by patching svg.nas to allow elements to be looked up !)
• no need to provide different combinations of overlaid symbols (can be done by Nasal/Canvas via z-index!)

However, if you want something to be configurable, one important thing is having an element ID that we can refer to, in order to look up the key and modify the symbol via Nasal.
Without having an element id (e.g. for labels) we cannot easily modify such SVG images procedurally.

[Michat]

Good night.

VFR Symbols Set Based on AOPA's Charts and IFR Symbols set Based on Jeppessen glossary have been accomplished with almost none of the guidelines here exposed by Hooray.

I hope you understand and apologize any of the mistakes I could made. I'm just an Old bit Mapper aficionado, this is my first serious attempt using Inkscape still I have no time to see how it works.

Just remember that those symbols can be used by any project related with FG.

Here you can see a couple of screenies of the work.

https://gobblin.se/u/aepcam/m/flightgear-ifr-symbols/

https://gobblin.se/u/aepcam/m/flightgea ... r-symbols/

Amicalement

[Hooray]

thank you, will take a look - but please don't worry about those "guidelines", they are primarily to avoid unnecessary work and reduce the amount of time necessary to create these images, if you just consider it a learning experience it's obviously still useful to create different versions - but overall, we can do different versions/scales/styles using canvas.

[Johan G]

For future reference, VFR chart symbols, mostly by Michat, have been uploaded to the wiki and have been categorized under Category:VFR chart symbols.