[drats_users] [D-RATS] #28: Maps don't appear to be loading / displaying correctly.

[Dan Smith]

> It was interesting as it originally wasn't showing the percentage or
> other info.

I specifically clear the text from the progress bar when it is
complete.  In early versions, I had left it saying "100% Loaded", but
after a while it started to look strange.  Perhaps I should hide the
progress bar as well...

> Flushing the cache was also interesting.  It appeared as though
> D-RATS had hung when I confirmed that I wanted to clear the cache.
> Windows was reporting that D-RATS was not responding, but in the
> processes window I could see that there was a bit of activity.  The
> problem was that I had in excess of 150,000 map tiles that were
> being cleared and took approx 20 minutes to clear.  FWIW, I had
> previously loaded a lot of VK3 in high res map tiles.

Wow.  Yeah, D-RATS just calls the operating system's file delete
operation, so if you delete something large, it will take a while.
The OS blocks D-RATS from continuing until it is finished.

> Once the cache had cleared D-RATS happily loaded the new map tiles,
> which interestingly contained a lot more detail for my area than
> those that had been originally loaded.

Excellent.

I was thinking that perhaps I should add a "maximum tile lifetime"
setting and re-fetch tiles if they're older than that (and we're
connected to the internet, of course).

> What I did notice though, was that when I double clicked on a
> station, to center it for the first time, the percentage status
> indicated considerably less than 100% (even though the map detail
> looked fine).  As soon as I double clicked on the station for a
> second time the map load status then went to 100%.

Hmm, yeah, I see that here for some stations as well.  That's a bit
curious...

> I also noticed that when you do a mouse over a particular station,
> that is still in the cache from a previous session, that the Last
> Updated date/time displayed is when the current D-RATS was started
> and not when it was originally received.

Yeah, indeed.  I don't persist the timestamp it was last seen.
Perhaps it's time for yet another overlay file format update :(

-- 
Dan Smith
dsmith#danplanet.com, s/#/@/
www.danplanet.com
KK7DS