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Gps-touring is in very early days of development. No useful software exists here right now (February 2016)!

The motivation for gps-touring comes from cycling holidays, navigating with GPS using an iPhone running the ViewRanger app. On a typical such trip, I have already planned the route (in a set of GPX files), and have a list of places to stay the night (as GPX Points of Interest). This works pretty well, but there are some problems:

• The POI file may contain thousands of POIs (e.g. all the campsites in France). When loaded into ViewRanger, the app becomes sluggish.
• Similarly, the route needs to be broken up into separate GPX files, to keep the app responsive enough.
• It can be a problem to find the next GPX file for the route - systematic naming of the files helps.
• ViewRanger does not provide elevation profiles when using free maps (I usually use OpenCycleMap). I seem to remember that is strips out elevation data from GPX routes. But profiles are vitally important when cycling in mountainous area (which I do).
• At some point during the day when on tour, I start thinking about where I might stay that night. Campsites are often off the route, and comparing the distance (and climbing) to two different night time stops is not well supported by my current set up.
• It's great that GPX files are now available for many cycle routes. But their quality is variable. Often the tracks have many more points than necessary. Stripping out redundant points would be a nice-to-have optimisation.
• GPX files downloaded from the web may have overlapping sections of the route.

Proposed application

This section proposes a rough outline of what the gps-touring application.

Inputs

• A set of GPX files that describe the route.
• A set of GPX files that describe POIs - places to pass through (e.g. overnight stops)
• Config file, to control certain aspects of operation. Details tbd.

Interactive operation

• Route and POIs will be shown on a map.
• Additional features will drawn (e.g. the crows flight path between a POI and the nearest point on the route)
• Changing control parameters.

Outputs

• Config file - reflecting values of control parameters last used by the interactive application.
• A set of GPX route files, with names that allow them to be found easily, and sizes that are not too big to cause ViewRanger to become less responsive.
• A set of GPX files for POIs, with naming and sizing as above, POIs provided in the input files that are too far off the route will be omitted entirely - this usually eliminates the majority of input POIs.
• Information (distance and climbing - details tbd) to help choose between POIs that may or may not be visited.