💾 Archived View for rawtext.club › ~sloum › gemdrive.gmi captured on 2022-06-03 at 22:58:16. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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While maps may be a bridge to far for gemini, it seems that turn by turn directions rendered as text works out just fine in most cases.
Due to the limitations of gemini's input system and a desire to not create an ip tracking behemoth by using ip addresses to create consecutive prompts there are no filtering options available. This means that a route given may have tolls. You will be notified at the top of the directions if there are tolls.
When you follow the link below to generate directions you will be prompted for an from and a to address separated by a `>` character. So, something like the following should work:
Disneyland > Disney World
The search engine will know some landmarks, like the two Disney parks above, but not others. So some expirementation may be needed. For regular street addresses I have found that including a zip code GREATLY increases accuracy of directions. Be sure to look at the total travel time and distance to guage whether the results you are given look right. I have searched for my home address to my mothers home address, a trip of around 2 hours, and had it come back with a 38 hour trip when I used no zip codes, but the correct directions when using only one. So definitely include as much relevant information as you can.
Without further ado, lets...
Mapquest offers free api keys for their mapping data. The specific api being used by gemdrive is their OpenDirections api. It uses data exclusively from open sources (generally projects related to OpenStreetMap). User input is processed into an https GET request by a python script and sent to the api as a request. The response data is displayed to the user after being formatted for gemini by said python script.
If you would like a copy of the script as a abse for building out your own mapping service please reach out and I'd be happy to send it to you (sans my api key).