OpenLR™ - Newsletter
The OpenLR™ newsletter informs about news, changes and the latest updates. The subscription to the newsletter is free.
Earlier newsletters are listed below:
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Dear OpenLR followers, Today version 1.4.2 of OpenLR has been released. This update is needed due to bug fixes in the OpenLR encoder and decoder. The OpenLR encoder was not able to encode locations containing a very long line (longer than 15km) followed by several other shorter lines. The location reference path did not cover the location path completely. The OpenLR decoder calculated the positive offset incorrectly for point locations where the second location reference point was matched directly onto a line and not a node. This bug was detected by Jeroen ter Voorde from Simacan BV. Thank you for providing this information and also for providing the fix. The OpenLR team
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Dear OpenLR followers, Today version 1.4.1 of OpenLR has been released. This new version contains two bug fixes and some additional improvements. The release covers all OpenLR core packages and the OpenLR tools OTK and MapViewer. The bug fixes apply to the encoder and decoder package. The encoder generated an incorrect location reference in case that the location is longer than 15km and the negative offset is greater than the distance between the last two location reference points. In earlier versions the bearing value of the last location reference point was not adjusted. The decoder crashed with an exception if all location reference points referred to the same line. As an improvement the binary decoder now closes internal streams correctly. All packages are available for download from the OpenLR website. The OpenLR team
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Dear OpenLR followers, On December 20 a complete new release of OpenLR and its tools has been published. The new version for all core packages and the tools OpenLR Tool Kit (OTK) and OpenLR MapViewer is 1.4.0. The core packages have been revised. The map interfaces now offer additional functionality which improves the performance of the tools. Minor bugs have been fixed and some refactorings have been done. The OTK has been extended with the option to show information about map loaders. Additionally it is now possible to encode a multiple locations at once. A major update has been made for the MapViewer. This tool is now also available under the Apache license, version 2.0. The dependencies on the geotools library have been replaced with an own framework. Additionally the MapViewer supports area locations and the handling of two maps at the same time. The OpenLR team
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Dear OpenLR follower, today a new tool named OpenLR ToolKit (OTK) has been released. This tool bundles all command line tools for OpenLR. The previous tools "BinaryDataViewer", "CommandLineInterface" and "PhysicalFormatConverter" are now part of the OTK. Additionally we added two new features: "XML2KML" which generates a kml file from a location reference in XML format and "BBox" which calculates a bounding box for a binary location reference. The OTK starts with version 1.3.0 as it is compatible with the latest release of the OpenLR core packages. The OpenLR team
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Dear OpenLR follower, The white paper v1.5 published on January 17th, 2012 contains an incorrect specification of the binary format of closed line location references. The sections 8.3.5 and 8.4 are partly not correct. The correct information is now published in an errata document which is also available as download from openlr.org. The corrected white paper now comes in revision 2. We apologize for the inconvenience. The OpenLR team
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Dear OpenLR follower, OpenLR has been extended by support of area locations. In a cooperation between TomTom and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) the new OpenLR standard has been developed. The OpenLR white paper has been released in version 1.5. This version has been revised and extended with the specification of area location support. The recommendations for the implementation of an OpenLR encoder and OpenLR decoder have been restructured. Furthermore a new software version 1.3.0 has been released including a change in the license conditions for the core OpenLR packages. The core packages of the OpenLR reference implementation are now released under the Apache license version 2.0. The GPL version 2 license still applies to the OpenLR tools. This new reference implementation supports area locations according to the latest white paper version 1.5. The changes also include some refactorings and bug fixes. The tools have not been updated yet with support of area locations. These changes will be released soon. The OpenLR team
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Dear OpenLR follower, The OpenLR white paper has been released in version 1.4. This version has been revised and it has been split into several chapters following a logical model of chapters providing mandatory information on the OpenLR standard, chapters providing recommendations (optional for the OpenLR standard) and other chapters for the introduction, examples and appendices. Furthermore a new software version 1.2.2 has been released. This version implements the OpenLR standard according to the white paper version 1.4. The changes include refactorings and some bug fixes. All tools have been updated to the new version including several new features. The OpenLR team
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Dear OpenLR follower, A new software version 1.2.1 has been released today August, 4th including a new physical format datex2, a new tool for format conversion and an updated version of the map viewer tool. The datex2 package consists of classes for reading and writing Datex II xml location reference data. This package implements a schema as described on the Datex II website (http://www.datex2.eu/content/openlr-extension-10). The Physical Format Converter can be used to convert an OpenLR physical format into another OpenLR physical format. This tool provides a mechanism to convert e.g. a binary location reference into an XML location reference. This tool suppports the physical formats binary, binary (Base64-encoded), XML, and Datex2. The updated version of the Map Viewer tool now supports point locations and offsets. It is also possible to take screenshots and to store and load locations in a map- dependent format. The user can decode location references stored in one of the supported physical formats and the search has been extended by road name search. The following OpenLR packages have been updated: - openlr - data - map - encoder - decoder - binary - XML - datex2 - BinaryDataViewer - MapViewer - PhysFormatConverter All packages are available for download and Maven access from the OpenLR website at http://www.openlr.org. The OpenLR team
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Dear OpenLR follower, The new software reference implementation of the OpenLR method has been released today, July 14th. The new version 1.2.0 adds point location support and corresponds to the already published white paper version 1.3. The following OpenLR packages have been updated: - openlr - data - map - encoder - decoder - binary - XML - BinaryDataViewer In addition the map access layer provided by Tele Atlas also has been updated to support the new version. All packages are available for download and Maven access from the OpenLR website at http://www.openlr.org. The OpenLR team
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Dear OpenLR follower, TomTom (http://www.tomtom.com) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR, http://www.dlr.de) have agreed on developing a support for area locations for the OpenLR technology. This coming extension forms the next step of the OpenLR method in order to provide support for various types of locations including the already existing support for point and line locations. The extension of OpenLR enables a wider use of the technology for various markets. Those who express an interest in area locations are invited to send any comments or proposals to technical@openlr.org. Any further comments on the OpenLR technology are also welcome. First results of the area location development are expected to be published later this year. The OpenLR team
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Dear OpenLR follower, the OpenLR method continues to be developed and it has been extended to handle point locations. In this context it has also been introduced a new offset imlementation. The extensions and improvements are outlined in the version 1.3 of the OpenLR white paper document. Point locations are zero-dimensional elements in a map that specify a geometric location. At least one coordinate pair specifies a point location. OpenLR defines three different point location types to handle most of the existing real-world examples. A "GeoCoordinate" is a simple pair for coordinates, a "PointAlongLine" defines a location on or besides a road element and a "PoiWithAccessPoint" stands for a point of interest (poi) as a coordinate pair and an access point to that poi identified on a road element. The new offset implementation improves the accuarcy of the placement of offsets along a road element. The former approach tended to be inaccurate in some instances. The new implementation overcomes this drawback and provides a flexible method to encode offset information. The new white paper document version 1.3 can be downloaded from the OpenLR website at http://www.openlr.org. A new software reference implementation corresponding to the latest white paper will follow soon. The OpenLR team
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Dear OpenLR follower, The OpenLR method continues to be developed. It will be extended to handle point locations and in this context it will also introduce a new offset imlementation. Point locations are currently missing and cannot be handled sufficiently. The current offset implementation in the binary data format has also some drawbacks when it is needed to specify very short distances. Both drawbacks will be removed in the upcoming version. A document, ready for download at http://www.openlr.org, summarizes the extension of the current OpenLR method with point locations and better offsets. The requirements for point locations will be explained and several supported types of point locations will be outlined. A new physical format implementation including a new format for offsets will be introduced. The document is a DRAFT and is subject to change. To emphasize the open source model of OpenLR we kindly ask everyone to comment on the draft document. Please make use of the forum or send us an email to technical@openlr.org. With kind regards, The OpenLR team
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Dear OpenLR followers, the OpenLR software implementation has been released in version 1.1.0 today, February 1st. Furthermore the OpenLR whitepaper has been updated to version 1.2 and a new tool "MapViewer" has been published. The new OpenLR reference implementation is now able to generate and read location references in an XML format, which is supported next to the well-known binary format. Users can now choose between these two physical encodings for OpenLR. The whitepaper has been aligned with the reference implementation and describes the new XML format in detail. The example given in the whitepaper has been updated and shows the location reference also in the XML format. The new tool "MapViewer" can visualize a map based on the OpenLR map interface. The user is able to do basic map operations like zooming and moving. It is also very easy to select a line location within the map and encode it. Encoded location references can also be decoded and visualized in the map. Tele Atlas also updated the map implementation to the new OpenLR version and they provide a map loader implementation being used to view the Tele Atlas test map in the MapViewer tool. The OpenLR team
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Dear OpenLR followers, the OpenLR white paper has been updated. The version 1.1 includes the errata list from the previous version and also the following list of changes: - Note added for physical format version number (section 4.5.1) - Section 3.4, Rule-4: U-turn nodes are also valid nodes; invalid nodes might be chosen exceptionally if no other possibility exists - Encoding steps, Step 1: turn restrictions are optional (section 7.1) - Encoding steps, Step 9: explanation how to deal with lines longer than 15km (section 7.1) - Decoding steps, Step 3: find candidate lines directly if no candidate nodes can be found (section 8.1) - Decoding steps, Step 4: LRP attributes may vary between encoder and decoder map so that values don't need to match exactly (section 8.1) - Decoding steps, Step 5: explanation how to deal with a situation where start and end line are equal; retrying other candidate line pairs if no valid shortest-path can be determined (section 8.1) - Explanation added for handling of prohibited turns in decoding example (section 9.2) The OpenLR team
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The OpenLR team announces that the utility tool "OpenLR Binary Data Viewer" has been launched today, November 23, 2009. The "OpenLR Binary Data Viewer" is able to look into binary location references and to generate a human-readable version of the binary information. The tool can read binary location references as well as Base64-encoded location references and the output format can be customized by the user. The tool is licensed under an extended version of the GPLv2 and can be downloaded at http://www.openlr.org/tools.html.
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Dear OpenLR followers, OpenLR, the open, compact and royalty-free dynamic location referencing has launched its Open Source project site today, November 9, 2009. At http://www.openlr.org you can find the open source reference implementation of the OpenLR method and a lot of downloadable material to learn about OpenLR. Documentation includes a technical white paper and an introductive presentation. Tele Atlas B.V. also provides free map samples and examples so that you are able to immediately test OpenLR on your own. The open source software is made available both as a normal download and - if you are using Maven as your software management tool - as directly accessible and always latest packages from our server. Additionally the web site offers an issue tracker where you can report and track issues with the software. This is complemented further by a forum where all topics around location referencing in general and OpenLR in particular can be discussed. We would like to invite you to visit the Open Source project at http://www.openlr.org and to contribute to OpenLR in order to make it an open, validated and successful dynamic location referencing method.