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IDProjectCategoryView StatusLast Update
0002282GeoSetterUser Interfacepublic2022-12-22 02:04
Reporterjllanos Assigned ToFriedemann  
PrioritynormalSeverityminorReproducibilityhave not tried
Status assignedResolutionopen 
Product Version 
Target VersionFixed in Version 
Summary0002282: Save Geosetter
DescriptionAll of us have been lucky to find and use Geosetter. This program is a masterwork for managing non graphical information of pictures; there is no other similar program with the funtionalities of GS (many thanks to Friedemann) and if it dies, it would be impossible to replace.
But every program requires a periodical maintenance and sometimes a rewrite of part of the program in order to keep it working properly in a changing world of OS, browsers, content providers, etc.

In my opinion the program needs to be retouched in the followings aspects:
- Change the use of Internet Explorer for the embedded map, and use another browser. This does not mean to change to leaflet or openlayers (imho); the presentation of the maps (Google & OSM) works fine; the threat is in the browser and its next end this summer.
- Include all the stuff of the program (js, icons, etc) in local folders (similar to 'locale', 'tools', etc.). It is nonsense to have half of the stuff in a webserver (www.geosetter.de).
- It's necessary to repair the update of Exiftool.
- The use of map_google.html has proven to be very useful, but installed in a local folder and without the "api key". Including a field in the settings for the user "api key", the program can merge the html and the key before opening the map. It's not so difficult to get an "api key"; many of us already have one, in order to use it in other programs.

If these changes are excessive for one person, may be you can ask for help or even make the program "open source". Please, don't let GS die.
As I read in this blog "It would be a shame".
TagsNo tags attached.

Activities

Arjunk

2022-04-04 13:51

reporter   ~0003980

https://example.com/
[url=https://example.com/]example[/url]

Arjunk

2022-04-04 13:52

reporter   ~0003981

www.example.com

Arjunk

2022-04-04 13:52

reporter   ~0003982

example.com

jllanos

2022-06-27 14:49

reporter   ~0003999

From the thread: https://groups.google.com/g/google-maps-js-api-v3-notify/c/l3mdkZ5JyDg

What do I need to know?

In August 2022, we are fully decommissioning the Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) browser.
IE11 is the final version of Internet Explorer. As support for IE11 from Microsoft and the Web community is ending, the use of the Embed API and JavaScript API from IE11 will be degraded per the following schedule:

For Maps JavaScript API:
   Beginning with Maps JavaScript API version 3.46 (release date August 2021)
   A dismissible warning message will be displayed to IE11 users at the top of maps, similar to this one: "You are using a browser that is not supported by the Google Maps JavaScript API. Please consider changing your
   browser."

   Beginning with Maps JavaScript API version 3.48 (release date February 2022)
   Maps will no longer load in Internet Explorer browsers.

   After August 2022 (when Maps JavaScript API version 3.47 is retired)
   IE11 support is effectively discontinued across all available Maps JavaScript API versions and channels.

For Maps Embed API:
   Beginning August 2021, a dismissible warning message (same as above) will be displayed at the top of maps for IE11 users.

   After August 2022 (at the same time as the JavaScript API version 3.47 is retired)
   Maps Embed API will no longer be available in Internet Explorer browsers.
_______________________________________________________________________________________

Please note the retirement date of version 3.47 of the Maps JavaScript API has been pushed back to November 2022.
In the previous message of this thread, please therefore read "After November 2022" instead of "After August 2022" in three instances.

dg234

2022-11-16 23:45

reporter   ~0004016

Jllanos - has anyone heard from Friedmann lately? I would be happy to help with changes to the code, but as you pointed out earlier -- we need the code in the public domain.

The Maps JavaScript API looks like it died today and we are back with a geosetter error: Could not complete the operation due to error 80020101 showMap3(

jllanos

2022-11-17 09:44

reporter   ~0004017

dg234 - nobody has heard from Friedemann in months except one or two notes in the blog.
It seems to me that heiko has closer contact with him.
As Google announced during the las two years, the API version used by Geosetter has been retired and the program is now near to death.

WilfriedB

2022-11-17 11:27

reporter   ~0004018

I just reported error 80020101 too, since I didn't see dg234's comment. Hoping for a solution.
Meanwhile:
I did realize, "Synchronize with GPS-Datafiles" does work correctly, you just cannot see the position immediately. But after saving the images, you can see the map with other applications. I use Daminion to verify or correct the position and/or place. There should be others, such Geotog, GPXSee (on Windows), or ShowGPX (browser based), which offer some help, but neither can really replay GeoSetter.

jllanos

2022-11-17 19:26

reporter   ~0004021

It is not too late yet to sell or auction or give for free the Geosetter source code to a person or institution, or make it public.
If so, thank you; if not, goodbye Friedemann.
Be happy with your program that stopped working because you did nothing.

WilfriedB

2022-11-17 19:58

reporter   ~0004022

@jilanos, since we don't have any background information, I wouldn't be that harsh und prefer to thank Friedemann for all the work he did in the past and cross my fingers, hoping he doesn't have any serious problems whatever kind, they might be.
Having said that, I agree completely with you first statement.

jllanos

2022-11-17 20:21

reporter   ~0004023

WifriedB - You are right.
I remove the last sentence and apologize. And of course I thank Friedemann, as i said in the opening note of this issue.
But I'm losing hope of continuing to use the program.

arbeitsvorbereitung@siersgmbh.de

2022-11-18 09:10

reporter   ~0004027

Are there any alternative programs for GeoSetter that I can use in the meantime?

WilfriedB

2022-11-18 10:26

reporter   ~0004028

@arbeitsvorbereitung@siersgmbh.de you can still use GeoSetter to geo-tag your images, but need a different program to show the locations on a map. I use Daminion, but there are other tools for example GPXsee ( http://www.gpxsee.org/ ). The latter does not provide a way to change or add a position manually, whereas Daminion does, but it is a much bigger solution.

roscoe

2022-11-18 10:52

reporter   ~0004030

See here https://geosetter.de/mantis/view.php?id=2261#c3952

Fiedemann promised a new version, let's hope he can keep his word. Alternatively, he will give up the development and someone else will continue this irreplaceable program. It could also live on as shareware for a fee.

WilfriedB

2022-11-18 11:33

reporter   ~0004031

@roscoe & @jilanos reg. "someone else will continue this irreplaceable program. It could also live on as shareware for a fee.":
I hope so too, but I am not so optimistic. I am still using another program (ImageIngester) for a different purpose, which started as freeware, added a professional version for a cheap fee and ... suddenly disappeared. The author commented they did consider to make it available to the public, but it was "impossible" (without any further explications).
Having some little experiences with software development, licensing and copyrights, I can imagine several scenarios which could prevent someone from sharing own developments.
Anyway, I cross my fingers, but at the same time appreciating any suggestions for possible replacements.
As I said, I earlier, for now, I continue to use GeoSetter to "blindly" tag my images with the numeric coordinates and the suggested IPTC place tags. Immediately after that, I use a different program (in my case Daminion, but there should be cheaper solutions) to visualize and if necessary to correct the locations.
Again: Good Luck to Friedemann!

roscoe

2022-11-19 11:28

reporter   ~0004033

@arbeitsvorbereitung@siersgmbh.de
there are several other programs that allow geotagging for photos. But beforehand, I have already tested many of them. There is no real replacement for Geosetter. All other programs are capable of geotagging, but compared to Geosetter, they are cumbersome or lack functions or possibilities.
Here is a selection of these programs:
Adobe Lightroom (expensive) but is a good choice if you then do all the photo editing and management with it.
Darktable and Digikam, both free alternatives to Lightroom and also handle geotagging.
Garmin Basecamp can also tag photos. PicaGeoTag, Geotag Ninja and Geotag are also free programs for geotagging.
For those who don't care about photo editing and management and are looking for free software, I would advise Geotag Ninja or perhaps PicaGeotag here.
The knowledge is still valid - Geosetter is not replaceable by anything.

buttercookie42

2022-11-19 13:04

reporter   ~0004034

Because I'm geotagging my pictures completely manually , I've actually depended quite a bit on Geosetter's field-of-view display (based on the focal length in the EXIF data plus the camera model crop factor database) in conjunction with aerial imagery in order to pinpoint the location of a particular image – but it seems that few other programs have a comparable feature.

I actually already use Digikam for viewing and searching among my collection of images, but it's lacking a field-of-view display. PicaGeotag seems to be mainly about the case where you have a parallel GPS track (which I haven't) and just need to match timestamps, and Geotag Ninja – I don't want to disparage the author's efforts in writing that program too much, but boy is it slow in loading a folder (yes, I get the "unsupported characters in your filenames, enabling slow compatibility mode" warning, but after all Geosetter had no problems in quickly loading my images with the same file system configuration), plus it only has an OSM map view and again no field-of-view display (though as it's open source, with sufficient motivation I might be able to make enough changes for my personal workflow).

One thing I wonder about – the HTML file used for the map display thankfully is easily configurable and therefore hackable. OpenLayers apparently hasn't support IE11 for quite a while now (but supposedly it could still be made to work via transpilation), whereas however Leaflet 1.x still seems to have officially supported IE11 until right now and only dropped support with the upcoming 2.x-branch.

So that makes me wonder whether a replacement map HTML that keeps API compatibility between the Geosetter main program and the browser control could be written based on e.g. Leaflet. Accessing OSM tiles doesn't need a complicated JS API, and as for Google Maps for the aerial imagery – I suppose you couldn't necessarily officially ship a version that just directly accesses the raw tiles, but unofficially it might be made to work and therefore wouldn't require any new-fangled JS features not supported by IE11, either.

othmarmarti

2022-11-19 14:40

reporter   ~0004035

Friedemann Schmidt, the author of Geosetter regularly posts photos on

https://www.flickr.com/people/schmidtze/

The latest post is on 2022-11-07. Maybe this could be another way to contact him. He is on Facebook too:

https://www.facebook.com/friedemann.schmidt

Hope that I could help.
Othmar

jllanos

2022-11-19 17:05

reporter   ~0004036

@othmarmarti - In my opinion, the problem is not in contacting with Friedemann, but if he is willing in contacting with us.
Having this web (geosetter.de) and this blog with all the notes were are posting I cannot beleive he is not aware of the situation of Geosetter.
I think that he is tired of the program (and of all of us) and has chosen to dissapear...

jllanos

2022-11-19 17:44

reporter   ~0004037

@buttercookie42 - I´m not using field-of-view, but I'm geotagging my pictures completely manually too. So, i have no tool now to geotag easily.
In my opinion, we have to forget IE11; it has dissapeared. It´s like the horse carriages in the cities...
In order to solve the problem, I don't consider the use of Leaflet or Openlayers, because of the steep learning curve and the fact that you have to completely rewrite the code of the map, and correct all the bug that will surely appear.
If I have to solve this problem, I would keep Google maps API, but I would call MS Edge instead of IE11 as a browser (using Webview2). It works and it seems fast and easy to make this change in Geosetter.
But you need the source code of the program or the will of Friedemann to make the change.

buttercookie42

2022-11-20 00:07

reporter   ~0004038

If you had access to the source code, then sure, updating to the new WebView2 would likely be a sensible decision, but since I *don't* have that access, trying to rewrite the map HTML based on Leaflet still seems the next most workable solution to me if there's no sign of life from Friedemann.

membree

2022-11-21 15:33

reporter   ~0004039

For those looking for a hopefully temporary Geosetter replacement, as roscoe mentioned in an earlier Note, the free and open source digiKam application (www.digikam.org, Linux, Mac, Windows) can be used to do much of what Geosetter does, but it is missing some functionality that I am used to so I would really like to see Geosetter fully working again.

digiKam can adjust photo timestamps, sync photos with GPX tracks, display them on a map which can be OSM or Google (Road, Satellite, Hybrid, Terrain), can display GPX tracks on the map (but won't use waypoints at all), and allows you to manually set or update photo location by dragging photo markers or thumbnails on the map. Like Geosetter, you need to update a local digiKam file with your own Google API key to get rid of the watermark and dimming when using Google Maps. However, for those who aren't interested in digiKam's photo management capabilities, it's quite heavyweight and complicated for just Geotagging photos.

WilfriedB

2022-11-21 18:35

reporter   ~0004040

@membree does DigiKam also add the IPTC place tags (Country, State, City. Location), as GeoSetter does?

othmarmarti

2022-11-21 19:14

reporter   ~0004041

Digicam (and darktable) work well with most of the non-geo tags. Both write the geo-location as geo.... tags in the xmp and/or iptc section in the keywords section, the way flickr expects them. Geoseter writes them to the exif-section and the derived items to the keywords-section.
I only know of one other tool to work similarly as geosetter, mappero http://www.mappero.mardy.it/. It writes geotags the same way as geosetter. But thats all the program does. There is no way to enter the line of view or the target. You can use a browser based map to estimaste the angle and enter it directly in geosetter. (and, mappero is not free)
The place tags of digikam are different from those in geosetter

membree

2022-11-21 19:23

reporter   ~0004042

digiKam can do Reverse Geocoding but I haven't used this function.

digiKam geolocation documentation:
https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/digikam-doc/digikam/tool-geolocation.html

membree

2022-11-21 22:33

reporter   ~0004043

Showfoto would be more suitable geotagging solution for those who aren't interested in the digiKam photo management functions. Showfoto is a standalone photo editor containing the digiKam photo editing functions, including geotagging, without photo management and a database. It is a separate program but is installed along with digiKam (www.digikam.org), there doesn't appear to be a separate installer for it for Windows or Mac but I think there is a separate package for Linux.
https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/digikam-doc/showfoto/index.html

digiKam and Showfoto write geo tags to EXIF and XMP, I haven't been using XMP but there doesn't appear to be any way to prevent them from also writing the XMP geo tags. A difference from Geosetter is that digiKam/Showfoto doesn't write GPS time and date tags, but that likely isn't particularly significant in most cases.

Partly because Geosetter hasn't been updated to support the relatively new EXIF time zone offset tags (OffsetTime, OffsetTimeOriginal, OffsetTimeDigitized) and still deals with time zones in a non-standard way, my photo workflow uses ExifTool to apply any required photo time corrections (typically due to camera clock drift or setting error) to the EXIF times before I Geotag, and as part of this, I write the EXIF time zone tags, so for me, GPS time can be determined from the photo timestamp and TZ offset tags, if I need it for something. I don't think that digiKam and Showfoto currently deal with the EXIF OffsetTime* tags either, but they are under active development and support, so likely will at some point and until then, I'll keep using ExifTool.

xyzzy

2022-11-22 15:45

reporter   ~0004045

Good news. I received this message this morning


Hi,

please look here, my comment from this morning: https://geosetter.de/2018/05/10/new-website-new-geosetter-de/#comment-17981

Best regards
Friedemann

drs14

2022-11-22 19:19

reporter   ~0004046

That is fantastic news, and I hope that anyone who can donate to him will.

I take a lot of photos of vacant land for work (on the ground and w/ a drone). GeoSetter is the only program I know of that will map 500 pictures and show their direction so I can QUICKLY sort out what picture shows what property. It's a huge timesaver, and I think so many more people in my field would use it if they just knew about it (even if there was just a dumbed down version that did that....the biggest hurdle I've faced when showing co-workers is that the full interface can be a little intimidating).

Either way, can't wait for the update

P.S. - almost got depressed again when I noticed the URL was "2018/05/10"...then I checked the comment again and sure enough, posted today! Awesome.

othmarmarti

2022-11-22 19:49

reporter   ~0004047

The Paypal Link says thet the geosetter.de site is broken. It is not possible to donate via paypal. But there is

Empfänger: Friedemann Schmidt
Bank: ING-DiBa
SWIFT: INGDDEFF
IBAN: DE23 5001 0517 5405 9153 17

It would be reassuring if Friedemann could confirm that the account is active.

Thanks for the good news!

heiko

2022-11-23 19:49

developer   ~0004052

I just wrote to Friedemann and he said that PayPal is working again.

dg234

2022-11-25 18:03

reporter   ~0004053

Heiko - Thanks for letting us know about the Paypal link. I just sent a donation.

WilfriedB

2022-11-27 20:24

reporter   ~0004054

As described in https://geosetter.de/2018/05/10/new-website-new-geosetter-de/#comment-18073 the map works again! For now, only the OpenStreetMap and if you changed the settings in the past to point to a local "Map File", you need to change that to http://map.geosetter.de/v3/map_google.html again (as it originally was) in Settings->Map Address and Layers->Map File
Thanks a lot to Friedemann!

othmarmarti

2022-11-28 10:14

reporter   ~0004064

Thanks a lot to Friedemann for the work and WilfriedB for the news!

dg234

2022-11-28 13:58

reporter   ~0004068

New leaflet with openstreetmap works great. Friedemann, Thank you so much for all the hardwork.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
2022-03-21 18:57 jllanos New Issue
2022-04-04 13:51 Arjunk Note Added: 0003980
2022-04-04 13:52 Arjunk Note Added: 0003981
2022-04-04 13:52 Arjunk Note Added: 0003982
2022-06-27 14:49 jllanos Note Added: 0003999
2022-11-16 23:45 dg234 Note Added: 0004016
2022-11-17 09:44 jllanos Note Added: 0004017
2022-11-17 11:27 WilfriedB Note Added: 0004018
2022-11-17 19:26 jllanos Note Added: 0004021
2022-11-17 19:58 WilfriedB Note Added: 0004022
2022-11-17 20:21 jllanos Note Added: 0004023
2022-11-18 09:10 arbeitsvorbereitung@siersgmbh.de Note Added: 0004027
2022-11-18 10:26 WilfriedB Note Added: 0004028
2022-11-18 10:52 roscoe Note Added: 0004030
2022-11-18 11:33 WilfriedB Note Added: 0004031
2022-11-19 11:28 roscoe Note Added: 0004033
2022-11-19 13:04 buttercookie42 Note Added: 0004034
2022-11-19 14:40 othmarmarti Note Added: 0004035
2022-11-19 17:05 jllanos Note Added: 0004036
2022-11-19 17:44 jllanos Note Added: 0004037
2022-11-20 00:07 buttercookie42 Note Added: 0004038
2022-11-21 15:33 membree Note Added: 0004039
2022-11-21 18:35 WilfriedB Note Added: 0004040
2022-11-21 19:14 othmarmarti Note Added: 0004041
2022-11-21 19:23 membree Note Added: 0004042
2022-11-21 22:33 membree Note Added: 0004043
2022-11-22 15:45 xyzzy Note Added: 0004045
2022-11-22 19:19 drs14 Note Added: 0004046
2022-11-22 19:49 othmarmarti Note Added: 0004047
2022-11-23 19:49 heiko Note Added: 0004052
2022-11-25 18:03 dg234 Note Added: 0004053
2022-11-27 20:24 WilfriedB Note Added: 0004054
2022-11-28 10:14 othmarmarti Note Added: 0004064
2022-11-28 13:58 dg234 Note Added: 0004068
2022-12-22 02:04 Friedemann Status new => assigned
2022-12-22 02:04 Friedemann Assigned To => Friedemann