I have Windows 10 and Android 11.
I am working on a project with multiple very large apartment complexes.
I have a paper colored apartment complex map for each complex.
The map does not seem to be online so it's a paper handout only.
At each complex I'm expected to visit a set of given units each day for
various reasons and all they give me is this paper map to find each unit.

That works. But it's inefficient.
They do this to everyone, not just to me.

We're expected to use the paper map with hundreds of apartments and dozens
of buildings, where the numbering system for buildings usually makes sense
but not for the apartments. Sometimes we even need to visit parking spaces
as we have vehicles parked which we have to put notices on where the
numbers make no sense on purpose for security reasons.

Only AFTER I find a given location, I've been using OSMand+ to save the
current position. First off I'm surprised that OSMAnd+ doesn't have a "Save
Current Location" option which I thought almost all map programs would have
had.

So what I do is establish my current location & long press the blue dot.

These apartments all have individual outside entrances so it's not like a
hotel where you go down a long hallway to serially find the door number you
need.

When I get to the right apartment door I step outside the entrance on the
ground floor and press as close as I can on the blue location dot which
pops up a "Looking up address" OSMAnd+ menu which usually gives the same
address for all locations. Then I press the "Add" star and change the name
to "Complex Bathroom" or "Complex Pool" or more commonly "ComplexBldgApt"
such as "RedwoodApts Bldg15 Apt489" or "RedwoodApts Lot15 Spot489" or
something like that.

Once I've renamed the current pressed location, I hit Save and then I can
navigate walking after that where OSM can talk me through the steps even
when the phone is in my pocket and my hands are full.

Having to fatfinger the location isn't as accurate as having a "Save
Current Location" button would be but it's definitely good enough for
government work as they say.

When I need to navigate to a given spot I first point the phone north with
a compass app because moving compass navigation directions aren't so easy
when walking and then I orient the OSM map toward that heading to get my
initial bearings of which way to start walking and about how far it will
be. Usually I'm carrying tools or supplies so my hands are almost always
full.

That's all I need but I'm working with others from the local work to future
group where everyone else wastes time trying to find the building & apt.

What I want is make a local geospatial pdf of the paper colored apartment
complex map which I can then hand to each person whose phone can then point
to the location.

All of that brings me to my question of how to make that geospatial map.

The first method that was suggested that I tried and failed at was to
download the OSM map tiles and then try to modify them with the specific
apartment and building information to try to use them inside the OSM app.

I wasn't able to download Google satellite image map tiles because of the
limitations of the tiny portable laptop without any Python or C++ on it.
https://github.com/AliFlux/MapTilesDownloader

But I found a way to download the apartment OSM map tile as an osm file.
https://blog.richmond.edu/sal/2017/10/30/downloading-open-street-map-osm-data/

From Windows Firefox I used the OSM web interface to export *.osm tiles.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/export#map=18/{latitude}/{longitude}

Then I converted that exported *.osm file online to a series of SHP files.
http://mygeodata.cloud/

These SHP files are actually of a bunch of formats inside a zip archive.
amenity_polygons-polygon.cpg
amenity_polygons-polygon.dbf
amenity_polygons-polygon.prj
amenity_polygons-polygon.shp
amenity_polygons-polygon.shx
buildings-polygon.cpg
buildings-polygon.dbf
buildings-polygon.prj
buildings-polygon.shp
buildings-polygon.shx
landcover-polygon.cpg
landcover-polygon.dbf
landcover-polygon.prj
landcover-polygon.shp
landcover-polygon.shx
roads-line.cpg
roads-line.dbf
roads-line.prj
roads-line.shp
roads-line.shx

But I'm at a loss what to do with these SHP files inside of OSMAnd or
inside of any app, for that matter.

In a second approach, I followed up on the suggestion to create a geo
spatial PDF using Adobe Acrobat but so far I'm failing miserably.
https://get.adobe.com/reader/

From these instructions it will only work with Acrobat 9 & above
https://acrobatusers.com/tutorials/interacting-geospatial-pdfs/
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/geospatial-pdfs.html

I found the latest full offline Adobe Acrobat Reader installer here.
https://get.adobe.com/reader/enterprise/
https://ardownload2.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/win/AcrobatDC/2200220191/AcroRdrDC2200220191_en_US.exe

But I think it maybe needs the Acrobat Writer and not the Acrobat Reader.
https://acrobatusers.com/tutorials/acrobat-and-reader-9-and-geospatial/

Does anyone know if the reader can create the geospatial PDFs?
Or just the writer?

As a third approach, I'm currently trying this QGIS tutorial.
http://www.qgistutorials.com/en/docs/3/georeferencing_basics.html

The main problem with QGIS is it won't work with the HP Stream laptop.
Nothing you can do that is below super human will get it to install.

But I found a portable GIS version 6 that installs onto a removable drive.
https://portablegis.xyz/
https://download.astuntechnology.com/home/ (login=pgis,password=pgis)
https://download.astuntechnology.com/home/portablegis_setup_v60.exe

Does anyone have qgis/pgis that knows if the pgis works like the qgis does?

mark wrote at Sun, 2 Oct 2022 18:13:55 -0000 (UTC) :

> But I'm at a loss what to do with these SHP files inside of OSMAnd or
> inside of any app, for that matter.

I've never done it but the OSM wiki says you can edit a local copy of an
OSM map using either a JavaScript ID editor or a Java OSM editor (JOSM).
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Edit_maps

I'd suggest the more powerful Java OSM (JOSM) editor over Javascript ID.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JOSM

The Windows 10 JOSM installer should be located at their home page.
https://josm.openstreetmap.de/

> But I think it maybe needs the Acrobat Writer and not the Acrobat Reader.
> https://acrobatusers.com/tutorials/acrobat-and-reader-9-and-geospatial/
>
> Does anyone know if the reader can create the geospatial PDFs?
> Or just the writer?

My reader doesn't have the commands for importing the OSM shape files.
Therefore I think you need the Adobe Acrobat Writer (not the reader).
> Does anyone have qgis/pgis that knows if the pgis works like the qgis does?

They don't tell you at that portable gis https://portablegis.xyz/ web site
that you first need to install Microsoft Visual C++ onto your system drive
before any of the PGIS QGIS 3.4.7-Madeira Desktop Packages buttons will
work on your laptop removable drives.

curmudgeon <curmudgeon@spam.edu> wrote:

>> Does anyone have qgis/pgis that knows if the pgis works like the qgis does?
>
> They don't tell you at that portable gis https://portablegis.xyz/ web site
> that you first need to install Microsoft Visual C++ onto your system drive
> before any of the PGIS QGIS 3.4.7-Madeira Desktop Packages buttons will
> work on your laptop removable drives.

I installed Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable x64 which didn't
ask where to put it so I assume it went onto the almost full system drive.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-US/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist?view=msvc-170

Then I installed portable GIS (pgis) onto the removable drive and the
button for the Desktop Packages "QGIS" brought up QGIS 3.4.7 as stated.
https://portablegis.xyz/

The suggested tutorial is for a much older version of QGIS unfortunately.
http://www.qgistutorials.com/en/docs/3/georeferencing_basics.html

On my portable QGIS version 3.4.7, "Raster>Georeferencer" doesn't exist.
Neither does "Layer>Georeferencer" so I gave up on that old tutorial.

The QGIS interface is so complex that I need to look for a newer tutorial.

mark <mark@mark.edu> wrote:

> The QGIS interface is so complex that I need to look for a newer tutorial.

The setup, so far, has been horrific but I've been making progress.

At first QGIS wouldn't install on the system drive (too little space on the
32GB HP Stream 11) and then GQIS wouldn't install on the ten times larger
removable drive, and then when portable GIS (pgis) was installed, the QGIS
button inside of PGIS would error looking for a DLL which turned out to be
due to the absence of C++ runtime libraries.

Now that QGIS 3.4 Madeira is running as a portable app on my puny travel
laptop, I followed this youtube tutorial, but I'm finding youtube tutorials
fly by too fast to catch the keyboard presses so I'm stuck at a point that
I need help to overcome. https://youtu.be/jKLBFddpTGI

There were some hurdles that I only found the solution to in the comments
(such as the Georeference plugin command not showing up initially), but I
think that tutorial "should" suffice but he moves too fast without
referencing what keyboard or commands he's activating.
(a) I loaded the OSM georeferenced map
(b) I loaded my PDF map which is not georeferenced yet
(c) I created a half dozen georeferenced common points on both maps
using the suggested transformation and coordinate system.

Where I'm stuck is at time point https://youtu.be/jKLBFddpTGI?t=660
I can't tell what he's using on each of the ten referenced points.

For me, those ten referenced points would be ten apartments so the step he
glossed over too quickly for me to catch is probably an important step.

No matter how many times I watch the video I can't figure out what he did.
But on my own, I saved the results at that time point any way that I could.

Now that I've run the georeference to create the *.qgs or *.qgz result, I
don't know what the next step is.

I tried loading the *.qgs or *.qgz result into OSMAnd+ but apparently
OSMAnd+ can't use local maps.

They keep talking about "shapefiles" but I don't know what that means.

When I loaded the results into Avenza, the current location was slightly
off the map so somehow the georeferencing is slightly off.

What I need is a TEXT (not video!) tutorial for QGIS 3.4 that shows how to
georeference a PDF or JPEG for use inside of a map app like Avenza.

I am already at the point where I created the GCPs.
But I am stuck at what I save and what I load into an Android map program.

Any explanation of what "Shapefiles" are used for in my application would
be useful. Also any explanation of what I have to save the file as to use
inside an Android navigation program would also be useful.