TrailRunner

What's new
TrailRunner 1.5 is a heavy rewrite of all core components dealing with maps and geographical coordinate systems. Hopefully resulting in a much simpler user interface but in any case much better for me to maintain as I squirted out some complex crap code that's not needed anymore.
In previous versions of TrailRunner the most complicated thing was to understand what to do next with an empty document in front of you: The solution was calibration and loading of maps. In TrailRunner 1.5, new documents now automatically show a regional background map of an area nearby your current location. That's not patent pending but clever enough to make you feel home. The task following is to zoom in to the exact location and to start creating your personal trail-network.

World View and Resolution Independence
Additionally the map loading process is now simplified and improved for different zoom levels like in GoogleMaps. Before, TrailRunner loaded only the highest resolution maps available, resulting in heavy memory load for overview zoom levels. The new version just loads the resolution you see and the deeper you zoom in, the more detailed maps are reloaded. As caching was vastly improved, zooming in and out will become undisturbing after a short while.
Also the scroll bars have gone. As a document could now cover almost the whole world, scroll bars didn't make sense anymore. To move the working area around, use the hand tool. While using other tools, use the space bar to temporarily access the hand tool.

The working area is now resolution independed. Tracks, way-points and labels now always stay the same visual size even if you zoom down to the ants. Displayed tracks are now visually compressed representations of the original track meaning the more you zoom in, the more detailed the track will be displayed.

Maps and Locations
A new map source was added. OpenStreetMap is an open source initiative where people like you upload their GPS tracks and cartographers create professional grade maps from these. I was having an eye on the effort for almost two years now and this summer seemed to be full of mapping weekends. So use these maps for free and if you are able to, try to contribute to the project. One important thing with OpenStreetMap is that these maps constantly change and as TrailRunner heavily caches imagery, use File > Consolidate > Empty Cache to reload the current visible maps.

To manually add maps to TrailRunner, just drag images onto the working area and rotate or scale them to the size they perfectly match the background maps. After the map fits well, just add it to the store by moving it to any of the lower layers in document settings.
Dragging new map tiles into the document will now remember the scale and rotation modifications of the previous tile. This makes it much easier if you drag-copy tiles from web applications into your document and have them rotated and resized like the previously selected tile.

Another new feature is the locations pane. You'll find two lists there. The upper one shows all way-points in your document, sorted by distance to the current location. The list below searches an internet database for locations. If you import a GPX file in locations, only the contained way-points and lap-points will be added to the upper list. Both are meant to give you a fast way to navigate around your trail-network or respectively the world.

Important Compatibility Notes
TrailRunner 1.5 will no longer support documents that where calibrated manually. This is due to the fact that the whole manual calibration was crappy and so I removed it. I know that this will cause a lot of trouble to some of you. But on the other hand it caused even more trouble and unsolvable problems to others. Make the world a better place by using the global coordinate system. It's now more straightforward to use.

Because of fundamental changes: DO NOT OPEN DOCUMENTS SAVED IN 1.5 WITH 1.4! Should you need to, always work with copies!

The central data store now only saves personal maps you've imported manually. Background maps loaded from Internet services WILL BE REMOVED and reloaded in the new format. This might take quite long when you first start up with the new version.
The new background maps are cached under Home/Library/Application Support/TrailRunner/GeoTiles. This cache can become very huge. But if you delete stuff from inside there, TrailRunner won't get harmed.

As TrailRunner will remove data from the central data store, you should better make a Backup of it. It's located in Home/Library/Application Support/TrailRunner/GeoBitmaps2.datastore – just duplicate the file and keep the save copy.

Donation Policy Changes
By the official release of TrailRunner 1.5 I will increase the fixed donation to 25 Euro (~ 34 USD). That's mainly because I think that the value of the new Release is worth it. Anyone who registers today will still receive a registration for the old amount, so make up your mind, be warned and still be invited to use TrailRunner for free but with the nagging message at the beginning. And sure, all previous registrations will stay valid.

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> TrailRunner 1.5 Beta

With the fabulous help of some users, TrailRunner is now fully localized to German, Swedish, Italian, traditional Chinese (Taiwan), French and (new) Dutch.
Thank you very much Oskar, Pierino, Nitoc, Xavier and Steven.
If you like to translate TrailRunner to your language, please contact me. Still missing are Spanish and Japanese.

TrailRunner 1.4 gets into shape. The biggest change is the new workout analysis chart depicted above. Most importand changes are the following. If you like to joint the Alpha Team, read the Beta app-cast and download the latest version:

http://www.trailrunnerx.com/appcast-beta.xml

Highly requested, finally done. Colorize your tracks with any of the predefined colors. TrailRunner can attribute tracks with soft values like iTunes rating stars, a description text and now color codes. If you mark a track in red because it's dangerous, in orange because it's a hight traffic street or in green because it's a beautiful woods trail ... it's your individual expression.

TrailRunner goes into the next evolutionary round. The upcoming version includes MapDiscovery to easily spot the point to start from. Hopefully this will make things much less complicated (as long as map coverage for the area you dwell in is good enough).
And this is how it works: Open an new document, select File > New Location. MapDiscovery will open up. Zoom into the location you want to start from and set the location. Now TrailRunner will ask you to download maps for an approximate area of 10 square kilometers. This will take a while but after that your are "up and running". Map Sources available cover: USA, Canada, Catalonia (Spain), Bavaria/NRW/Hessen (Germany), Oberösterreich, and more to come.
Happy Season.
Download the TrailRunner 1.3 Beta

I must admit that the United States Geological Survey (USGS) is more and more getting my best friend. The scientific agency of the United States government offers many web-based services providing geographical data of the United States and partly about the rest of the world.
The newest discovery is the elevation database. Thanks to the pointer from Mike Jacobsen, TrailRunner now can query the online-database for every single point in your TrailRunner document and will receive the corresponding elevation. Best of all: It seems to cover the whole planet.
To download elevation data for you net of tracks you need a calibrated document. The menu command File > Import > Elevation data from Internet-Service will start the download. As it takes long, you might also check out the same locations in the fresh air, while the download is proceeding.

TrailRunner can now import the last workout from your Nike + iPod Sports Kit. For that a new Toolbar-Button is available under View > Customize Toolbar.
The import process is straight forward. You connect your iPod Nano to your Mac. Press the toolbar import button (or File > Import > From Nike + iPod Sport Kit) and a sheet with the last workout data will come up. Optionally select the corresponding route in the list of routes (or create a new one) and press the Add button. Now the diary will come up, containing the new entry. Have fun with this one. If you happen to have problems with the import, please contact me as reading the data off the iPod Nano is done by a hack that might fail.

TrailRunner 1.1 features an improved diary. In short it's about search, flag and compare.

Chart
In the new toolbar, switch the area above the entries table to display either calendar based data entry fields or a comparison chart.
The chart reflects the current selection in the diary table, displaying at least 10 weeks from the newest selected entry backwards. If you select more entries in the table, the cart will update to the new entries range.
Entries will always display as a grouped value based on the current interval. The base interval is by weeks and can extend to months if you select a big amount of entries.
In the legend on the right you see the overall values for the displayed data. If you need to know the data for one data-point, select it and you'll see the specific values in the lower legend.

Fitness
The fitness is a calculated value based on pace and heart-rate. The main idea is that if you where very fast with a low heart-rate, you're fitter. In the opposite if you where very slow and had a high heart-rate, you're less. This value is just an orientation and does not have the accuracy of the methods used in Polar watches or other bio-medical methods, but it gives a pretty good overall impression.
The scale of the values is in the value range of the polar watches, but that's only a nice coincidence.

Flag
As you are accustomed from Mail.app, entries can now be flagged in the leftmost column. If you start a series of exercises to reach a certain goal, flag the first one. If you had a very nice exercise or competition, flag it.

Search
The search field in the lower right corner will search for diary entries (looks into column route and personal notes) that contain the given search term. The diary table will then only display matching entries.
This provides various ways to tag and filter diary entries, to later compare entries of the same class. Some examples:
To find out how many kilometers you have accomplished with a pair of shoes, tag all entries with a unique tag like xasc06 (your Asics 2006 pair). When you later search for that term the chart legend will display the values you want to know: number of units and sum of kilometers.
To compare your performance in a certain route over time, enter the routes name and the chart will display the performance values.
To make a distinction between running and biking, tag all runs with xrun and all biking exercises with xmtb. Later search for either tag to see a chart with values only of this kind.
If you use a polar watch and regularly measure your OwnIndex, enter the OwnIndex in the personal comment like ownindex:52. Later search for ownindex and see you progress on the measure checkpoints (unfortunately not in the chart but filtered on entries with this information)

Export
Not a new feature but a good place to mention, if you select diary entries, edit > copy will put them as tab separated columns into the clipboard. An easy method to transfer entries into Excel or other analysis tools.

TrailRunner can now download map images from the internet. Main-USA, Hawaii and Alaska have a good quality as they are based on topographic maps from the 60´s. Unfortunately the rest of the world is only covered (yet) with low to mid quality Nasa satellite imagery.
The current implementation is a proof of concept so you might want to try it out and tell me if it is of any use to you. It might make sense if you happen to get a GPX file from somewhere or if you imported some data from your GPS Device and want to look at the geographical region the route is in.
But I expect more map-servers popping up in the near future. There are already some nice ones for Germany but they only support local coordinate projections — to much work to implement a support in TrailRunner yet.
If you have any feedback or some pointers where I could find other servers to include, please drop me a line. For the technically interested, the known services directory can be found in the MapServices.plist inside the Application Package.

And this is how it works for mere mortals: Import any GPX into an empty document or take a calibrated one. Under File > Import you'll find a new menu item to download the map data.

Have fun, patience and a fast internet-connection.

TrailRunner NanoMaps have been redesigned a bit to match more the visual appearance of Apple iPod designs.

From the original post: After struggling very long on how to describe a route in a very compact and portable way without using expensive GPS-Units which – if running trough the woods – wouldn't really do it anyway, I now added this kind of export. So if you are the lucky owner of the all so cool iPod Nano, this feature really is the best way to stay on track. With NanoMaps every waypoint on your route is displayed with a snap-shot of the map-area around it. Additionally the map is rotated in a way that the direction you are coming from is always at the lower edge of the screen. The orange arrow then shows you the direction you should turn to. The biggest benefit now is, that even if you did not put every possible track into your map you can still see that there are other tracks at a crossing. Because it is not possible to have subfolders in the nano Photo-Library, green squares with a readable route-code in the overview mode help you to find the route you are looking for.
So buy a nano, download some Podcasts, export your NanoMap and have fun with your exercise…

TrailRunner has undergone a rewrite of its internal data structure. Before v70 only way-points where able to store elevation information. This changed. Now the first fruit of this effort has come up. An elevation chart for the route description window. The elevation chart is fully interactive, so you can click and drag the selection marker to inspect the course of your route. On the left side you see a small nano-map of the current way-point giving you directions in what direction to turn. It's the same nano-map you can export on your iPod or cellphone. So the new route description window is a good precheck before you leave the house.

The TrailRunner exercise plan is based on a 3 week cycle. The cycle starts with a normal week, followed by a more intensive week and closing with a regeneration week. After this phase the overall intensity is increased by an individual factor like 5% and a new cycle starts.
The intensity itself is the distance in kilometers or miles. Please note, that the TrailRunner exercise plan is a base-plan, so the average heart-rate you should have during the workouts should be in your aerobic metabolism zone. How much you like to increase from cycle to cycle is something you can plan in advance. But an average from 1% to 5% would be appropriate.
What happens here is the following: You set yourself small goals, reach them, breathe a sigh of relief and set the next small goal. Step by step you'll increase the distances you can accomplish and TrailRunners route calculation will help you find the appropriate courses. The following example illustrates this:

• Say in the first week you would start off with a distance of 10 Kilometers.
• Then the following week is a intensive week. This means the distance is increased by 20% to 12 km
• The next week is a recreation weak, with a reduced distance by 20%, so it's 8 km.
• Now the cycle is finished and we head into the next phase. The base value of 10 km is now increased by the factor you planned before, say its 5%.
• So the first week would start off with 10,5 km
• The following week with 12,6 km
• And so on. Over the a longer period of time the distances will increase like shown in the chart.

This said, you need to plan every unit per week. Add as many units to the Exercise Plan tab you would like to accomplish per week. Say you might want to have two units per week, you could call the first unit the "during the week unit" and the second the weekend-unit. The increase level for both units could be different. During week might increase by 1% and weekend by 5%.
The Exercise Calendar Tab then shows the concrete distance for one week. When the plan starts, something you set in the Exercise Plan with a given start date, you can add week by week and TrailRunner will calculate the values for you, following the rules given above.
Note: If you plan to use an adaptive exercise plan, that increases by the real values you have accomplished, then do not add all possible weeks in advance. After you have completed a week you can adjust the values of the given kilometers or miles by the real values you have accomplished. Then as you add a new week, the rules will take the changed values into account. For example if you did not make the base value of 16 kilometers but only 14, TrailRunner will not add 5% to the 16 Kilometers but to the 14.
The Exercise Calendar has two Buttons: Find Route and Apply. Find route takes the value of the selected workout unit and starts a find route for the given value in the main window. Apply will take the distance value of a selected route and replace the value of the selected workout unit by that. So the two buttons are something like the in and out of the exercise plan.
The third tab Event Calendar is very simple: Add event dates to it and track how many weeks are still left until the event will happen.

The TrailRunner Diary has improved, The new version can now be exported as a Weblog. For that you can enter a public comment on a route in the above field, together with a picture and a private note in the bottom field (if you can read any german you will notice this note above being very private). Together with your weblog entries, a route description is also being published as a gpx-file. This enables other users to find routes from other TrailRunners.
Currently the weblog can only be exported to an FTP Server. If you do not like the design of the default weblog, the template is based on RapidWeaver from RealMac, so you can choose any RapidWeaver compatible theme for your personal weblog.

To help you keep your personal TrailRunner data safe, I created a ‘QuickPick’ backup scheme for use in Apple’s Backup 3 software. For those new to .mac and Backup, a QuickPick defines a backup plan for a single application. For example, TrailRunner´s QuickPick lets you easily backup your TrailRunner preferences and your personal diary - each of which are stored deep in your users Library folder.

To use the set, copy it to ~/Library/Application Support/Backup/QuickPicks/ and add the QuickPick to your Personal Data & Settings Plan. You find the backup-plan in the Extras folder.

The NanoMaps feature is now available not only for the iPod nano but also for any kind of mobile device with a color-screen – especially for cellphones. To set the appropriate image-size the preferences for export now allow you to set the width and height for the NanoMaps. As a side effect the 320 x 240 resolution of the new big iPod is now supported too. For all who do not know the resolution of their device I started a collection for common devices like the T610 on the left. You can find the list in the Library (Bibliothek). If you did successfully export your directions onto any device that is not listed there, please leave me a note what device you are using and the resolution that fits best on its screen. In general I expect you to transfer the NanoMaps onto your cellphone using the Bluetooth File Exchange Application. Browse your device and drag the images into its pictures directory. My kudos to Ulf - thank you for the hint and keep on running.
> Download Version 0.8.3

TrailRunner should be fully localized to english by now. The application already was with build 44 but as of now all documentation and help is also available in your language. So feel free to play around with every feature that you didn't find by accident yet.
Actually I prefer the english online-help over the german and I will adjust that it the near future to keep both versions current in content and style.

Ein paar interessante neue Features im TrailRunner, wer sie testen will, ist herzlich eingeladen:

Trainingstagebuch: Zum Eintragen und Sammeln von Traingsdaten.
Kartenimport: Jetzt mit mehr als 72 dpi und im Programm drehbar.
Import von GPX-Tracklisten: Erschließt Online Routenportale wie http://www.gps-tour.info
Optimierte Streckennetzkonstruktion: Mit Befehl-Klick direkt an andere Abschnitte anknüpfen.
Mini-Tutorial: Für einen schnellen Start (siehe auch die Screenshots)

Freue mich über Feedback.



> Download | Änderungen

Der TrailRunner geht in die nächste Runde. Der Import von Kartenmaterial, das Legen eines persönlichen Streckennetzes, das Planen von Routen und der Export/Import von Routendaten ist soweit fertig.

Der Versionsspung auf die 0.7 bedeutet, dass jetzt das Lauftagebuch kommt. In diesem Build noch als schäbiger Prototyp, aber immerhin schon ein Anfang. Auch wenn das mit der Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Mindestvoraussetzung bis jetzt noch nicht wirklich stimmte. Das Tagebuch läuft auf jeden Fall nur mit Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

Viel Spaß.

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Endlich! Der TrailRunner wird langsam offen. Der Routenimport für GPX-Dateien (XML) und TrailRunner-Routenarchive ist nun (fast) abgeschlossen und die Daten werden schön in das Streckennetz eingewoben. Einen riesengroßen Fundus an Streckendaten gibt es bei gps-tour.info. Übrigens, ist schon jemand glücklicher Besitzer eines Garmin Forerunner?
Bei der Gelegheit sind nun auch die Werkzeuge zum Legen von Streckenabschnitten besser geworden. Man kann nun einen Streckenabschnitt legen und gleichzeitig einen anderen Streckenabschnitt auftrennen, um daran anzuknüpfen.
Wer übrigens noch GPS-Koordinaten zum Kalibrieren seiner Karten benötigt, kann das Online-Werkzeug GISWiki nutzen. Es basiert auf GoogleMaps und zeigt zu einer Position im Satellitenfoto die GPS-Koordinaten an.

Zwischendurch ein kleines Wartungsupdate nach meinem Urlaub. Kleinere Verbesserungen gibt es beim Drucken der Karte, hier wird wirklich nur der auf dem Bildschirm sichtbare Bereich gedruckt. Beim Zoomen in die Karte hüpft die Anzeige nicht mehr hin und her, sondern versucht immer den "sweet-spot" also den aktuell interessanten Punkt auf der Karte, im Auge zu behalten. Neu ist das (grundsätzliche) Drehen von Kartensegmenten, einen Link zur Online-Hilfe und ein Menüpunkt für Feedback an den Autor, beides zu finden im Menü Hilfe. Viel Spaß…

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Der TrailRunner nimmt langsam Form an. Die neue Version kommt wesentlich aufgeräumter daher. Das „brushed-metal Theme” von iTunes macht die Oberfläche viel kontrastreicher und besser erfassbar. Die beiden schrecklichen Reiter Karten und Routen haben endlich ihren Dienst getan (in der letzten Version verschwand zum Glück schon dieser katastrophale Unschärfe-Schieberegler für die Routenplanung). Man findet die Karteneinstellungen (Kalibrierung) und die persönliche Laufgeschwindigkeit nun unter den Einstellungen. Gleiches gilt für die Routenplanung, die sollte nun so gut wie selbsterklärend sein.
Neue Funktionen gibt es eigentlich keine, sondern nur weitere Optimierungen. Mit Alt-Klick kann man in der Karte die Darstellung der Abschnitts-Etiketten durchrotieren. Über das Menü Darstellung und die dazugehörigen Tastaturkürzel können Streckenabschnitte nun direkt bewertet werden.
Nach meinem Urlaub geht's dann weiter in Richtung Lauftagebuch. Viel Spaß beim Planen.

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Die neue Version kümmert sich um die Darstellung von Attributen zu Streckenabschnitten in der Kartendarstellung.

Streckenabschnitte kommentieren
Manche Streckenabschnitte mag man lieber und möchte diese – wenn es geht – eher laufen als andere. Dazu gibt man einem Streckenabschnitt eine höhere Wertung. Der Routenautomat bevorzugt bei der Suche Streckenabschnitte mit einer höheren Wertung.
Zur besseren Orientierung bei der manuellen Planung kann man über das Menü Darstellung > Abschnitte mit > … festlegen, welche Informationen in der Kartendarstellung für Streckenabschnitte angezeigt werden sollen. Die folgenden drei Darstellungsvarianten stehen zur Verfügung: Name, Wertung und Distanz.

Man verändert Informationen zu Streckenabschnitten, wie auch zu Wegpunkten, über die Info-Palette.

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Die neue Version bietet im Wesentlichen eine Verschlankung und Verbesserung der Routenqualität bei der automatischen Berechnung. Hat man Streckenabschnitte mit einer Wertung versehen, werden diese nun perfekt so eingebaut, das ein guter Kompromiss zwischen schön und passender Länge gefunden wird.
Neu ist auch das automatische Umsortieren von Streckenabschnitten in eine psychologisch wertvolle Reihenfolge: man läuft auf Umwegen weit raus ins Feld und dann möglichst auf dem schnellsten und direktesten Weg wieder zurück.
Für die manuelle Routenmanipulation kann man jetzt in einer Route einen Wegpunkt auf einen unbenutzten ziehen. Die Route wird dann (wie in der Hilfe beschrieben) über diesen Punkt gelegt.

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