Medium term plans

Working on the options screen for the POI data, I'm becoming aware that the gradual evolution of CanalplanAC has lead to some rather messy and inconsitent internals.

There are two different sets of options that can be saved in cookies: the route options and the gazetteer options. There are two different bits of the site you can log into (with different userids and passwords!): save and load routes and add photographs. There are bits that ought to be settable but aren't (your default starting position for example).

There is a also a weakness in the separation of the gazetteer and the route. This has lead to things like the Virtual Cruise, which is really a cut-down gazetteer being invented. Virtual Cruise is great, but the only reason it exists is that the gazetteer doesn't have access to the generated route.

So here's what is going to happen over the next few months, in order. It's the nearest thing CanalplanAC gets to a project plan. Italics is a policy change that will come out of things at around that stage, rather than a specific piece of work.

• Gazetteer POI options will be implemented
• The gazetteer will be redisgned to look more like the home page and photo pages with a left-hand menu bar. Some common code will be created and used for this
• The log in and account process will be enhanced with things like "remind me of my password"
  
• Users will be able to log on (with the existing "remember me") option from the home page
• Only registered users will be able to load./save routes and options
• Once logged in you will be able to load/save routes, add photos etc without any further verification
• User options from the route planner and from the gazetteer will be saved in a central database by userid. If you are logged on, you will be offered this.
• A new "options" screen, probably with tabs, will be created to set all options; exising route, existing gazetter, new ones

This will make the code more robust (there is clearly something dodgy about the user accounts for loading and saving at the moment: moving them in with the reliable photo ones will help), make it easy to rationalise things (the new style gazetteer will be flexible enough to work as the virtual cruise), and will be a good foundation for planned future work like the adjustable scheduler I have planned (since it will give me somewhere to keep the huge quantities of intermediate data).

So watch for this slowly appearing. I don't promise not to do other fun stuff along the way though!