Yes, Kosmos has reached a new version (download the latest package from here). It contains some cool new features, but I have spent most of the work on improving the user experience. But let’s start with new features:

Mobile GMaps support

Kosmos maps on MGMaps screenshot

I’ve already blogged about this. In short, you can now use Kosmos-generated maps on with a Java mobile application called Moble GMaps (MGMaps). The idea is to generate map tiles from your Kosmos project, copy them to your phone and tell MGMaps to use them. Since the map is stored on the phone, you don’t need to use the mobile network or pay anything to view it. I’ll soon write instructions on how to set up the whole thing on the Kosmos OSM Wiki pages. UPDATE: the instructions are here.

Error list window

Kosmos GUI Error List Window

When loading projects, parsing rendering rules etc. Kosmos GUI will now display all the errors and warnings in a special “error list” window. This is combined with much improved handling of various errors in rendering rules – instead of causing Kosmos to crash, you should now be able to see all the detected errors in this window. In case some a parameter has an invalid value, the rendering rules engine will now use a default value – typical example is entering an invalid color value.

Handling of rendering rules errors has been a longstanding issue with many users – hopefully this has been improved now, but there will probably be some bugs, so please report if you encounter any.

Changes in the Kosmos console

Kosmos console has a new command called “zappy” which allows you to download OSM data from the OSMXAPI server. This has been already available in Kosmos GUI, but I wanted to extend it to command line support since it can be used for automating certain tasks. A simple example: you can now periodically download new OSM data for a certain area and generate fresh tiles from this data – so your tile server will offer up-to-date maps.

By the way, the command line options for generating and serving tiles have been changed. Instead of having to manually edit parameters in the Kosmos project file, you can now specify everything you need from the command line. Also, these parameters will be stored in a special file together with generated tiles, so when serving tiles, you only need to specify the location of the tiles cache. I’ll write more about this on the OSM Wiki later. UPDATE: the instructions have been updated.

Exporting georeferenced bitmaps with world files

All bitmaps generated in Kosmos (except the tiles) are now equipped with a world file, which should allow users to use these bitmaps in other GIS tools. However, this is only a partial solution – you still cannot import bitmaps into Kosmos and also GeoTIFFs are not supported. I will implement importing of bitmaps with world files in later versions, but only if they use Transverse Mercator projection. Supporting other types of projections (by using image rectification) is not planned in the near future since it’s beyond the scope of this application (read: I just don’t have enough time to do it).

NOTE/WARNING: you will not be able to open bitmaps from projects created with previous versions of Kosmos, since the new version does not use the georef information embedded in the project file – it now uses world files for this. Unfortunately backward compatibility is one of the things I chose to sacrifice due to lack of time – mostly because I think all the bitmaps generated in Kosmos can be regenerated without much problems.

Other new stuff in brief

  • Generating relief contours in GUI is now customizable – you can specify the elevation interval. I also wanted to add customization of how the contours are rendered, but this will have to wait for the next release.
  • Kosmos can now read GPX v1.0 files
  • Entering of direct OSM wiki URLs for rendering rules (like http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Kosmos_General_Purpose_Rules) is now allowed.
  • Data files that cannot be loaded in the GUI project are now greyed-out.
  • The same way can now appear in multiple multipolygons without causing Kosmos to crash.
  • Various bug fixes.

That’s it – the next task is to update the Kosmos documentation in the OSM Wiki. After that, I’ll try to get back on Kosmos 3D stuff which I neglected for the past few months.

I hope you enjoy the new version and please report any bugs you discover (there’s bound to be a few of them ;) ).