Several things, though the foremost desire involved some nutty ideas I have about how better to edit track information. While it is certainly possible to edit tracks with the current interface, it is not terribly efficient, and can be quite hard to control. Example: I was trying to use TF to make the map of the new race course for the
Socorro Fat Tire Fiesta. I am not a strong enough rider to ride the whole thing at once, so I did it in pieces. I then tried to use TF's Make Network feature to join them all up.
That didn't work out so well.
I had three basic problems: First, while you can split a track segment into two segments (I think), there doesn't appear to be any way to join two segments into one, or combine segments from different tracks.
Second, there is no control over which segments TF tries to average, or how it averages them (yes, there are the global controls, but those do not give the level of control necessary for accurate maps). This leads to duplicate segments in some locations, while other segments get averaged to an incorrect location (when compared to the aerial photos, e.g.). This isn't a bug per se (TF didn't misbehave), it just didn't know what the "right" answer was, and I couldn't tell it.
Finally, and more fundamentally, track segment networks are not tracks. If the track is manifold (a simple loop), then they are equivalent. Any sort of complicated route, though, involves jumping between segments, and/or duplicated sections of the trail (often in different directions). Tracks imply a certain sequentiality; this is not present in networks. No GPS is going to be able to handle a complicated network "track" properly, as it doesn't match the GPS' expectations of what tracks are. Try "backtracking" a network to see what I mean.
Put another way (because I really do think that this is an important point): You can't ride a network. You CAN ride a track involving pieces of the network strung together in a certain order. But, AFAICT, there is no way to create a track from a network under TF. So networks look great when rendered, but that's about all you can do with them; the length, elevation profile, and even direction of travel are all suspect, because the sequentiality is broken.
So, what does this have to do with automation? Simple: I was going to write a track network editor, which would drive TF for display. Kind of a testbed to see what works and what doesn't when editing tracks. Once I had something that worked, I was going to present it to you, to see if you would include something similar in TF.
I can give you a better write-up of my ideas as they stand, if you want. You're more likely to get them in a finished form than I am.
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-- Mark
