I've been reading the source code the GPS app.

I must say, very readable code.

Now, I have a question on non-NAD datums and a question on hijack and a suggestion/improvement for the app itself.

1. For folks who are not in the USA we tendnot to use NAD co-ordinates on our GPS - is there much conversion/tweaking of your conversion routines to allow for this in the route files [e.g. for those of us who use WGS84]?

2. My understanding of how the current application works is that once launched from the Hijack menu it takes over your screen [and some key functions] until the program is exited.
Am I correct here in this behaviour - it would look to be consistent with how other apps like Empacman work?

If so, then how much work would be involved to add a "hide" Application menu option to the main "in app" GPS menu, that lets me "un-hook" all those bound/captured keycodes and also relinquish the screen back to the [presumably] Application that is updating the screen before GPS hijacked it [the main Player App?]. While still leaving the GPS app running in background - changing the GPS menu back to just "GPS" when I hide it will let me get to it again while its still running?

This suggestion would let the GPS app continue to record its track, mark off waypoints and do stuff it normally would, and it can still update its "local" copy of the screen in local memory, ready when you activate it again to update the display.

What I'm thinking/would like, is always having the GPS app running, and attached to the Hijack menu ready to be "woken".

Then when I need to do some GPS stuff, I can activate this app in terms of "bringing it to foreground" ala [X]Windows apps.

When I have finished with the App I select the "Hide" Menu option, which now unbinds its main menu from Hijack and replaces it again with the "GPS" only menu.
Then unbinds/releases all those keys it has captured, until I reactivate it next time?

You could even possibly allocate a couple of [hard coded for now] "hot" keys to let you hide and unhide the GPS app quickly from either the IR remote or from say the Sony stalk [there are a few [shifted] buttons e.g. all 10 on the Stalk you could use for this purpose.

[I don't think there are any buttons on the front panel you could hijack for this purpose of acting as application "hotkeys"].

That way you could "hot key" in and out of the GPS app at will. Kind of like those TSR add ins for IBM PCS in the mid-80s [like Borlands Sidekick].

You could even have the GPS app be able to play sounds for certain [user selectable] events [like reaching a waypoint or end of Route] - but thats a future feature I think.

Or even different sounds for directions e.g. One sound for turn left, another sound for Turn Right etc, that way you would not even need to take your eyes off the road to navigate. Simple "WAV file" sounds can be quite effective for this sort of thing.

The current "Quit" program option would still be there to really exit the program.

Any comments on this - when I get some time next month I hope to get this app up and running on my Empeg so I can do some serious hacking. I can see some real useful [user] extensions coming for the GPS app real soon now.