Not On Track with Route 66

Ever since Route 66 came out on OS X, maps have been drawn slightly compressed vertically (at least the European version). Vertical scale is 20-30% less than the horizontal scale. It's easy to see if you zoom out and look at a well known land contour. It also shows itself when using the measure tool to measure how much distance 200 screen pixels corresponds to. Distances vertically is 20-30% longer than distances horizontally (more map distance per pixel).

This is just a cosmetic problem since it doesn't seem to affect the operation of the program, only the visual display. But I'm rather disturbed by it...

Has anyone else seen this? Does it affect also the US version?

By the way, I connect Route 66 2004 to a Garmin eTrex Legend without problems, using a neat serial-to-USB cable that also powers the GPS. http://www.gpsw.co.uk/details/prod2164.html

-- Johan Sölve [FSA Partner, Lasso Partner] Web Application/Lasso/FileMaker Developer MONTANIA SOFTWARE & SOLUTIONS http://www.montania.se mailto:joh-nmontania.se (spam-safe email address, replace '-' with 'a')

I have not experienced any troubles at all with Route 66 on my G3
powerbook (Wallstreet) running 10.2.8, but then I've only just
installed it. It even liked my Rayming GPS unit
<http://www.1-gps.com/rayming-tn200.html>, so I'm optimistic about
using it for motor home navigation. I agree that the article was
interesting, and like its author, I too commend the company for adding
a valuable application to the (sometimes) all too meagre Mac market.

. . . rich

--On Wednesday, August 11, 2004 4:41 AM -0700 Bob Bergey <bobbergey.net>
wrote:

> Related to today's TidBITS article ...
>
> <http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07767>
>
> Interesting article, but it didn't say anything about installation
> problems or related bugs. I bought the program several months ago but
> have never been successful at getting it to run even one time, despite
> several installs and two different sets of install CDs. I'm trying to use
> it on a Titanium PowerBook G4/400, first under OS 10.2.8, then every
> Panther upgrade including 10.3.5 tonight. Still no luck -- crashes on
> startup every time. While I know this many not affect everyone, I know
> there are others who have had the same problem, and the company has not
> been able to come up with any answer that resolves the problems.
>
> Bob

I like Route 66. But I too had a lot of problems getting it running.
Exactly the same problem you're having. To fix it I had to go to the Route
66 application folder and set the owner/group to the user I run the
software as (with read/write), and also grant Others read/write permissions.

Apparently the program writes various settings as it runs to the folder
where the application is stored at.

Route 66 isn't the only program I've had to do this for, I also had to do
this for Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.

As far as accuracy, I've found problems too -- my parents house is about a
mile off (it was about 5 miles off until I installed the latest update
available on the Route 66 web site). My house was right on, but the street
my office is on is wrong.

I recently went on vacation in the Sun River resort in Oregon, and Route 66
came in really handy as the resort is just a series of twisting turning
roads, many of which have the same name (or very similar names). It also
came in handy when on the drive there we got lost and had to find the way
back to the highway we were supposed to be on -- instead of backtracking I
could recalculate a new route (in my head, not with the software) to keep
from losing too much time.

In all mapping programs I've used, I hate the directions lists they
generate. I prefer the type of "get on the highway going east, take this
exit". All the mapping programs give every little road ("go 20 feet down
exit ramp 30") and turn and actually make the directions harder to follow.
So I rarely actually calculate routes, or when I do I just use the
graphical display not the textual descriptions.

Route 66 definitely needs a better user interface, and needs to be more
multi-user friendly, but other than that I find it very useful.

Kevin

I loaded Route 66 on a Pismo G3 powerbook. I connected a Garmin 76S GPS RX through a Keyspan serial-to-USB adapter & discovered I did not have enough CPU, i.e. 600Mhz minimum G3 required to display the GPS tracker? I installed it on a 867Mhz G4 powerbook which fixed that problem, but discovered 25~30 second latency in GPS tracker. I found in the FAQ a mention of 15 second latency, but my baud rate through the interface is 4800 bps. Maybe a faster baud rate will improve this latency?