Google and Nokia Maps in MapTool for webOS
Did you know that with the last update of MapTool and MapTool Pro you can use many new map providers like Nokia (Here) Maps and Google Maps on your webOS device? Let me tell you how:
First you need either the free MapTool app or even better you’ve purchased MapTool Pro. Launch it and tap an the 3-dots (…) in the bottom right corner. A menu will pop up. Select the latest item, it’s called settings in your locale language. It’s a webOS feature, any other item will appear in plain English, sorry.
After selecting the ‘settings’-item a new scene will pop up with a lot of options. One of the first options is the ‘Renderer’. The renderer is just the source of the map tiles you can see in MapTool. When you open the popup list you can see ‘Custom 1’ and ‘Custom 2’ at the bottom of the list. These are to select your own map tile sources.
To define your own map tile sources we need to scroll the settings scene just to the very bottom. One of the last entries are fields to enter map tile servers, called ‘Server 1’ and ‘Server 2’. Additional you have a selection for the image type the map tiles are stored: jpeg or png.
The latest MapTool versions support map tile urls with pattern for latitude, longitude, x coordinate, y coordinate and zoom value. This allows us for instance to define Google Map tile server as Custom map tile provider. Also the Nokia map tile server (known as Here map) could be used. If you just specify an URL without pattern the map tile url is created like this:
http://tile.opencyclemap.org/cycle/[z]/[x]/[y].png
with “Server 1”: http://tile.opencyclemap.org/cycle/ and “Extension”: PNG
Using pattern you can define urls like this:
http://maptile.maps.svc.ovi.com/maptiler/maptile/newest/normal.day/{z}/{x}/{y}/256/png8
Possible patterns are
{x} x – tile index
{y} y – tile index
{z} zoom value
{lat} latitude of center of map tile
{lon} longitude of center of map tile
{lng} longitude of center of map tile
Here is a list of possible map tile servers and there url pattern.
Please note that MapTool uses {} to separate patterns and that MapTool doesn’t support alternative servers.
As you can see in the list, there are urls given for Google Maps. they probably don#t work anymore. At the moment a valid Google Maps map tile url looks like this:
http://mt0.google.com/vt/lyrs=m@169000000&hl=en&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}&s=Ga
You can use it if you like. Please note that Google Maps forbids caching of map tile from their servers. Their servers send the no-caching attribute with each tile which is processed by webOS and therefore neither downloading nor smart-caching in MapTool will work. You need to switch smart-caching off to use Google Map tile servers.
For Nokia (Here) map tile servers you need your own app id registered. Go to here to read more about it. Once you did it you can specify a Server-URL like
http://m.nok.it/?nord&app_id=_appid&app_code=appcode&c={lat},{lng}&h=256&w=256&z={z}&i=0&nodot&t=8
Find here a list of parameters. You might especially have a look for the ml and t parameter.
Januar 16, 2013
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Tags: o · Posted in: Allgemein
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