Mepo - Minimalist and hackable OSM map viewer for mobile linux
#1
Hi all,

I wanted to drop a note here about a Pinephone-related project I'm working on - its a minimalist (and fast!) OSM map viewer targeting good compatibility/support with mobile Linux. The project name is Mepo. There are some demo videos & you can learn more at the project's homepage:

https://sr.ht/~mil/mepo/

As for features it does POI searches, routing, bookmarks, offline mode, and some other neat stuff.

Right now its packaged for Alpine (postmarketOS edge), and NixOS.
For UI support: I'm working on Phosh compatibility for the next release (0.4) and its already quite usable in Sxmo and on desktop Linux (wayland & X).

I'm posting here as outside of the Sxmo mailing list, I haven't mentioned the project in many other places (!) but wanted to make sure the community is aware of the project! Feel free to file tickets on the bug tracker on sr.ht and also I can answer questions here. Trying to gather some more feedback and the project is open for contributions/suggestions etc. My idea is to beat the Google Maps/Apple Maps experience and offer a superior freedom-respecting and hackable experience for the Pinephone et al.!


---

Update: 1.0 has been released, you can read more at the mailing list update at:
https://lists.sr.ht/~mil/mepo-devel/%3C4...ail.com%3E

With the new release, mepo now supports Phosh, Sxmo, and now Plasma Mobile out-of-the-box.
Additionally per request a flatpak has been added as well to Flathub so usage on Mobian and other distros is now doable, see:
https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.milesalan.mepo

On postmarketOS edge, to install you can run:
Code:
apk add mepo-scripts

See the install guides for other distributions at: http://mepo.milesalan.com/installguide.html
A new documentation website is at: http://mepo.milesalan.com
And demo videos are at: http://mepo.milesalan.com/demos.html
  Reply
#2
(01-31-2022, 12:44 PM)mil Wrote: Hi all,

I wanted to drop a note here about a Pinephone-related project I'm working on - its a minimalist (and fast!) OSM map viewer targeting good compatibility/support with mobile Linux. The project name is Mepo. There are some demo videos & you can learn more at the project's homepage:

https://sr.ht/~mil/mepo/

As for features it does POI searches, routing, bookmarks, offline mode, and some other neat stuff.

Right now its packaged for Alpine (postmarketOS edge), and NixOS.
For UI support: I'm working on Phosh compatibility for the next release (0.4) and its already quite usable in Sxmo and on desktop Linux (wayland & X).

I'm posting here as outside of the Sxmo mailing list, I haven't mentioned the project in many other places (!) but wanted to make sure the community is aware of the project! Feel free to file tickets on the bug tracker on sr.ht and also I can answer questions here. Trying to gather some more feedback and the project is open for contributions/suggestions etc. My idea is to beat the Google Maps/Apple Maps experience and offer a superior freedom-respecting and hackable experience for the Pinephone et al.!
Been hoping this would happen eventually. Ill check it out later on tge laptop.

Thanks for doing this.

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk
  Reply
#3
Thanks for the info! I do not follow the sxmo mailing list but I sometimes check this forum.
I use Mobian on my PP which I daily drive and a good offline navigation software is what I miss the most on my PP so I am very happy to read about your project  Smile

I switched to the PP when my previous Android phone died, I was using OsmAnd~ (from FDroid) on it.
Do you now about OsmAnd ? It is the best offline navigation software that I know of. It is truly amazing. It is for the major part open-source but there is no Linux build, and it seems quite tied to Android/iOS with regard to the user interface.

There are days when I am tempted to attempt porting OsmAnd to Linux, but that seems a big task. Also there is the risk of the upstream breaking everything if we have to use private APIs. (There was an attempt of a Linux port in the past, named OffRoad, but it did not remain active for long, maybe because the user base was too small).

I would also like to try to get OsmAnd working on the PP using Waydroid.

Still, OsmAnd is not perfect because there is no native Linux build Tongue

I will definitely have a look at your project when I have time, and maybe help were I can. I will test, for sure.
  Reply
#4
(01-31-2022, 12:44 PM)mil Wrote: Hi all,

I wanted to drop a note here about a Pinephone-related project I'm working on - its a minimalist (and fast!) OSM map viewer targeting good compatibility/support with mobile Linux. The project name is Mepo. There are some demo videos & you can learn more at the project's homepage:

https://sr.ht/~mil/mepo/

As for features it does POI searches, routing, bookmarks, offline mode, and some other neat stuff.

Right now its packaged for Alpine (postmarketOS edge), and NixOS.
For UI support: I'm working on Phosh compatibility for the next release (0.4) and its already quite usable in Sxmo and on desktop Linux (wayland & X).

I'm posting here as outside of the Sxmo mailing list, I haven't mentioned the project in many other places (!) but wanted to make sure the community is aware of the project! Feel free to file tickets on the bug tracker on sr.ht and also I can answer questions here. Trying to gather some more feedback and the project is open for contributions/suggestions etc. My idea is to beat the Google Maps/Apple Maps experience and offer a superior freedom-respecting and hackable experience for the Pinephone et al.!
*
Will this be available in the Mobian GUI software store ?    ....   (eventually ?)
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your favorite OS Team
  Reply
#5
(02-07-2022, 09:46 PM)gab Wrote: Thanks for the info! I do not follow the sxmo mailing list but I sometimes check this forum.
I use Mobian on my PP which I daily drive and a good offline navigation software is what I miss the most on my PP so I am very happy to read about your project  Smile

I switched to the PP when my previous Android phone died, I was using OsmAnd~ (from FDroid) on it.
Do you now about OsmAnd ? It is the best offline navigation software that I know of. It is truly amazing. It is for the major part open-source but there is no Linux build, and it seems quite tied to Android/iOS with regard to the user interface.

There are days when I am tempted to attempt porting OsmAnd to Linux, but that seems a big task. Also there is the risk of the upstream breaking everything if we have to use private APIs. (There was an attempt of a Linux port in the past, named OffRoad, but it did not remain active for long, maybe because the user base was too small).

I would also like to try to get OsmAnd working on the PP using Waydroid.

Still, OsmAnd is not perfect because there is no native Linux build Tongue

I will definitely have a look at your project when I have time, and maybe help were I can. I will test, for sure.
I've heard of OsmAnd - though its rather tied into the Java/Android world afaik. Mepo is basically a brand new OSM viewer from scratch for linux and written in Zig (similar to C) and uses SDL (thus targeting good compat/portability across environments). Mepo is also likely a bit more 'open' in a way then OsmAnd as for POIs, routing, bookmarks etc. it features user-modifiable shell-scripts. Similar to OsmAnd it does an offline-mode. Do take a look and test!

(02-07-2022, 09:46 PM)bcnaz Wrote: Will this be available in the Mobian GUI software store ?    ....   (eventually ?)

Eventually yes it should be - hoping someone with debian packaging experience might step in - but if not I might take a stab myself too; I'm the package maintainer as well on the postmarketOS side. This month I'm working on Phosh compatibility for the next release; so from a UI perspective it should work well there after next release. Also i plan on adding an app icon etc. so once installed it'll just show up in the Phosh app drawer. Currently, there's desktop (X/Wayland) & Sxmo compat; master branch could already somewhat work with Mobian/Phosh (albeit in the interim you'd have to build from source currently).
  Reply
#6
I guess getting it included in Mobian will depend on getting Zig in there first, unless I've misunderstood Debian's packaging requirements for inclusion (which isn't unlikely!)
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepor...bug=995670
  Reply
#7
(02-09-2022, 11:45 AM)wibble Wrote: I guess getting it included in Mobian will depend on getting Zig in there first, unless I've misunderstood Debian's packaging requirements for inclusion (which isn't unlikely!)
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepor...bug=995670

Correct - would be dependent on zig being added to debian. I'd say its more 'matter of time' then very unlikely (but maybe you know something about debian's packaging requirements that I don't?). Thanks for linking the ticket on debian's tracker.

Ofcourse a flatpak, or building from source etc. could be utilized in interim.
  Reply
#8
An update - Mepo 0.4, adding Phosh and Sxmo support has been released and is available for postmarketOS (testing repo)!

You can see a demo video on Phosh/pmOS phone (identical functionality on Pinephone) at:
https://media.lrdu.org/mepo_demos/mepo_demo_0.4.webm

Notes on the 0.4 release at:
https://lists.sr.ht/~mil/mepo-devel/%3Ca...ail.com%3E

--

To install on pmOS edge:

Code:
apk add mepo-wayland
apk add mepo-xorg
  Reply
#9
This looks awesome Miles, thanks!
Cheers,
TRS-80

What is Free Software and why is it so important for society?

Protocols, not Platforms

For the most Linux-y experience on your Linux phone, try SXMO!

I am (nominally) the Armbian Maintainer for PineBook Pro (although severely lacking in time these days).
  Reply
#10
mepo is really great ! Thanks !

love the scriptability, here is a quick and dirty one to center map on the position given by pp gps  you just have to name it mepo_something.sh and place it in your path and it will be automagically available from the main menu Wink


#!/bin/bash
DISPLAYNAME=" Relocate : gpspipe 5s"

gpspipe -w -x 5 | grep TPV | tail -n 1 | jq '"\(.lat) \(.lon)"' | sed "s/\"/center_on_coords /" | sed s/\"/\;/
  Reply


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