Welcome on the homepage of the TrainPlanner project
The TrainPlanner is a program to find public transport routes with you mobile phone. The plans the application uses have to be added to the MIDLet. To do that there is a J2SE Application where you can create Plans and finaly bundle them to the Midlet.
The TrainPlanner is a software package which consists out of three applications at the moment.
It is developed under the GNU General Public License and is therefore free for everybody. The whole project is hosted on SourceForge.net so you may want to visit the project homepage.
The best thing to find out how the software package works is to take a look at the screenshots section.
The core is the TrainPlanner itself which is a Java 2 Micro Edition application (MIDlet) which is used to find public transport routes.
The Trainplanner needs a plan which you can create with the PlanCreator a Java 2 Standard Edition Application. With it you can easily create and modify plans. After you have completed the plans you only have to put them together and export the MIDlet out of the PlanCreator application and install it on your mobile phone.
The last part of the software package is the TranslationTool which will be explained below.
The student Jörg Müller and his project team Christoph Jaritz, Thomas Huber and Angelo Boschi got the task to create any product and presentate it. All four students of the higher technical college Kaindorf/Sulm are commuters and have to drive with the train every day so they decided to create a mobile application with which they can look up train connections faster than in an unhandy timetable.
What came out is this wonderful piece of software.
The technology used for this project is Java because most of the mobile devices such as cell phones use it.
The desktop applications also use Java in the 5.0 Version as it is a very good and powerful tool to develop good applications.
Netbeans was the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) used for all three applications because it supports visual development for standard GUI applications as well as for the mobile devices.
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One important point of the project is the international support. The program should not only be useable by English speaking people.
The application therefore has a very simple way to add support for a specific language: The TranslationTool. This tool gives instructions in English how to translate for the TrainPlanner and the PlanCreator.
If you start the PlanCreator it reads out the system settings and uses the language it found in the system settings assumed that a translation is available.
The TrainPlanner itself uses special language files (*.vp) which can also be created with the TranslationTool. While assembling the MIDlet with the PlanCreator you also have to add the languages you want to have available in the TrainPlanner. You can then choose the language in the options form of it.
If you have made another translation, please send it to xenonproducts at gmx dot at and it will be bundled to the release.
The following languages are built in the current release: Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.
TrainPlanner search form
The search form is easy to understand: You only have to choose the start point, the destination, the time and the day when you would like to drive.
TrainPlanner option form
The options form needs a little bit more explanation, especially the time deferral. The time input element depends on the implementation of the J2ME specification so some of the mobile phones return the time you entered in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and some in the local time. The TrainPlanner expects local time so if you are living in the time zone GMT+2 for example you enter 2 as time deferral.
The language and plan are self-explanatory. Under relevant stops you can uncheck all stops of a specific plan you do not need, so they will not be shown in the search from.
To apply the new settings you have to restart the application!
TrainPlanner searching results
After searching you will see a screen with the all routes possible for the whole day and the best route depending on the time you entered in the search form is selected.
The format of a route is as follows: the first time is how long you will be on the way, the number in brackets shows how often you have to change the transport vehicle. Then you can see when you have to start and the first station and when you will arive with the destination.
TrainPlanner route details
In the route details you can see the stations where you have to change and in front of them is an icon which helps you identifying the vehicle type.
TrainPlanner vehicle details
Under the vehicle details you can see all stations the vehicle drives to. The first Station with a red dot shows you where you have to enter the vehicle and the second red dot where to leave it.
TrainPlanner in Greek
Here you can see the TrainPlanner with a different language setting: Greek.
The part which is English here (Cancel and the time) depends on your mobile phone settings and not on the application settings.
PlanCreator main tab
This is the main tab of the PlanCreator from which you can create, open and copy plans. The copy function is especially useful if you have got a plan and you do not need all the stations in it, then you copy it and delete all stations that are not needed. This will give you a speed improvement while searching. But be warned: If you delete import change stations you will maybe not get all possible routes!
The export part is for creating the MIDlet: You add the plans and languages (at least one for every part!), enter the name for the MIDlet and press export. You then have to choose the directory you want to export the MIDlet to. The exported MIDlet consists of two files: NAME.jar and NAME.jad, where NAME is the name you entered (default: TrainPlanner). The installation on the mobile device is depending on the mobile device then, please contact the device vendor for help!
PlanCreator plan editing
Here you can see an opened plan ready for editing. On the left you can add, remove and copy vehicles. Copying is very useful if different vehicles visit the same stations but not at the same time, then you copy the device and only change the time.
In the middle you can edit the name, icon and days when the selected vehicle drives.
On the right you can add and remove stations to the vehicle plan. Every station has an arrival and departue time. The stations have to be added in order and it is therefore for example not possible that a station before another is visited later than the other. If you check the intelligent mode and raise or reduce the departue or arrival time all following or preceding stations will change their times in the same amount.
PlanCreator in Russian
This is the PlanCreator in a Russian system environment. It automatically sets it's language to Russian. You do not have to change any setting, except the system locale setting if you want to have another language.
TrainslationTool
The TranslationTool is very simple to handle. You can load and save your translations. You can read instructions in the lower text area. And last but not least you can load the two different translation files available in the TrainPlanner software package: the language.properties file for the PlanCreator and the Language.vl file for the TrainPlanner itself. If you choose to translate one of them, instructions depending on the file you want to translate will be shown in the info field.
This project is hosted on the open source development website SourceForge.net.
The following downloads are available:
- PlanCreator - The PlanCreator used to create plans and export your MIDlet (Nothing more is needed except at least one plan and one langauge file).
- Language Files - Language files for the TrainPlanner, including: Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.
- Bruck_Spielfeld.vp - The ÖBB Plan for the route Bruck an der Mur to Spielfeld Straß.
- TranslationTool - The TranslationTool used to create translations for the software package.
- TrainPlanner_src - The complete source code of the TrainPlanner project including everything of the above files, except the compiled programs.