Vespucci is an OpenStreetMap editor for Android and we are intending to soon release version 0.8.0 as a major upgrade from the current 0.7.0. The changes for this release are:

• New Honeycomb style Action Bar user interface, even on pre-HC devices.
• New EasyEdit editing mode that unifies all previous editing modes (which are still available for now) into one mode.
• Support Undo/Redo.
• Show way direction.
• Support way reversal and deletion.
• Add JOSM preset support in tag editor, customisations can be added.
• When tracking position, the direction you’re pointing/travelling is shown.
• Export GPS tracks as GPX files.
• Transfer/Other Location shows coordinates of last location.
• Allow installing to SD card.
• Allow nothing as a background, drop Osmarender.
• Allow downloaded data to be saved as a JOSM-compatible OSC file.
• Add support for Croatian, Danish, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, and Russian languages.
• Add crash error reporting using ACRA.
• Support alternate OpenStreetMap API servers.
• Many other bug fixes and improvements.

Right now we’d like people to visit our project download page and download a beta test copy. The latest beta can be found at:

http://code.google.com/p/osmeditor4android/downloads/list

and the file will be called “Vespucci-rXXX.apk”, where XXX is 330 as I type this, but it will change to higher numbers when later test versions are built. We intend to keep this updated as often as possible.

Apart from giving the new functionality a good test, we’d like to get the various language translations as correct and complete as possible. We currently have support for many languages, of which English is the only one I would expect to be correct and complete. All the others will have issues, some languages more than others. Apart from English, the other languages we currently support are:

• Czech
• Danish
• German
• French
• Croatian
• Hungarian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Norwegian (three variants)
• Polish
• Russian

Any additions (including whole new languages!) and/or corrections would be welcome. We would prefer a ready-to-go UTF-8 encoded “strings.xml” file, but will try to accept just about anything.

The text string files can be found in the SVN trunk at:

http://code.google.com/p/osmeditor4android/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2Fres

in the various “values” folders. “values” by itself is the default (English) folder. Click on the folder, then click on “strings.xml”, then on the page that appears right-click on “view raw file” link over on the right side of the page and save the linked file.

Some strings have been marked “DO NOT TRANSLATE”. Don’t even copy them into a “strings.xml” in a language-specific folder. Just leave them out of translations.

If you’re a developer, please check out the trunk. Note that the “Sequoyah” Eclipse plugin (Eclipse Help -> Install New Software) could assist editing the various files.

Thanks in advance to all our testers and translators. New contributors will be added to our list - see “Authors and licenses” at the bottom of the application Preferences. Or not, if you prefer.

Discussion on this beta test is taking place on our mailing list / forum:

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/osmeditor4android/TCM9ht_2lCI/discussion

Andrew Gregory, Vespucci developer