While we are waiting for PureMaps to provide offline functionality, here some instructions on how to get offline maps for uNav working using downloadosmtiles. I do post this here because I did encounter a few stones on the road to success.

1. download downloadosmtiles from the left hand menu
2. extract to a folder on your harddisc, i.e. Downloads/osmtiles
3. run the script with perl downloadosmtiles.pl --link='http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=49.5782&lon=11.0076&zoom=10&layers=B000FTF' --zoom=5:16 --destdir=somewhere/maps

• of course replace coordninates with your target coordinates, the area seems to depend on the zoom value after the coords
• replace the path for destdir with another one, default is the current working directory
• change zoom levels, levels above 16 do take quite some time to download, you can download 5 to 16 first, and only level 17 or above later if you really need it

4. copy the map-files (foldernames = zoom level i.e. 5) onto your phone i.e. in a folder Documents/uNav_maps
   [zip the map tiles and copy the zip file, that is much faster than copying thousands of files]
5. in Terminal app run the following commands:
   cd Downloads/uNav_maps
rsync -avp . ~/.local/share/navigator.costales/maps
   [rsync is faster than cp and gives you progress information]
6. open up uNav, goto settings, change Modus to offline maps

EDIT:
To specify a bounding box for the tiles do be downloaded the command in step 3 needs to look like this:
perl downloadosmtiles.pl --latitude=47.35371:49.93708 --longitude=7.38281:10.54687 --zoom=5:7 --destdir=somewhere/maps
edit finished

Have fun! Don't get lost!

for lazy guys like me:
If you do this regularly, you may wish to create yourself a small shell script in your phones home folder called i.e. cpbash.sh. Then only open Terminal and run bash cpmaps.sh. Put the following two lines into the script:
cd Downloads/uNav_maps
rsync -avp . ~/.local/share/navigator.costales/maps

Troubleshooting: (on ubuntu 18.04)
... Can't locate Geo/OSM/Tiles.pm in @INC ...

• open the file downloadosmtiles.pl in a editor
• before line 6 add the following line: use lib '/Downloads/OSMtiles/Geo-OSM-Tiles-0.04/lib';, replace the path with your download location

... Can't locate Geo/OSM/Tiles.pm in @INC ...

• install YAML.pm by running: sudo apt-get install libyaml-perl

• you may need to create the folder maps to be like this: ~/.local/share/navigator.costales/maps, then map data wants to be in there in a structure like this (see https://unav.me/offline/) :
  ~/.local/share/navigator.costales/maps/10/
  ~/.local/share/navigator.costales/maps/10/523/
  ~/.local/share/navigator.costales/maps/10/523/331.png

He has been mentioned, but many, many, many ... thanks to @bhdouglass master of OpenStore!!! What would we be without our OpenStore? Great work done there - and certainly a lot of time spend.

Many thanks to everyone working on clickable - I know for sure @bhdouglass and @jonius - who provide a magical and crucial tool for us to create apps.

Thanks @bhdouglass for asking me to maintain weather app. With your advice and a lot of starting help by @jonius , design guidance from some weeeee helper @CiberSheep I am happy to be able to contribute.

Also many thanks to all translators like @Anne017 for hours of translating, so others with less knowledge of the English language can enjoy Ubuntu Touch.

And thanks to everyone else here making up a nice community!

Edit: I forgot to mention two important contributors: @Krille and @nanu-c . With a lot of time and love they provide apps for matrix and signal. Significant add ons next to Teleports. So man thanks to you too!

Call for maintainers!

There are quite some core apps without a maintainer for a long time. Camera app and clock app joined that list this week.

Core apps need your help! Is there anyone with coding experience willing to take up the task? Please use the Q&A to ask around.

We do have loads of simple webapps in the OpenStore that are simple desktoplinks. It is easy to loose track when looking for "real" app.

Webber is a great tool for everyone to create a quick link for her/his favourite web page.

How about including webber as preinstalled app?
How about launching an "unpublish simple webapps campaign" to clear out OpenStore a bit?

I red this forum post and Marius's comment listed there (almost at the end). It says that there are plans are to move away from ubuntu location service towards geoclue and qtlocation and hybris platform.

What's the status with that. Is there any progress?

@makeixo Payments for Piepmatz is a service provided by https://www.digistore24.com/. This is something developers can set up for themselves within their apps. It might be something developers can pick up when developing for UT too. But this has got nothing to do with OpenStore.

Edit: Hm, maybe if the services are free unless some payment is done, then maybe OpenStore could use this feature and provide it for all apps? I don't know. Someone with more legal knowledge would have to look into this.
Spreading the word about this service might be the most practical thing to do...

@MarkG_108 Just in case you missed it, as I wrote under no. 4, zip the tiles before copying them onto your phone. That does work MUCH faster than transferring all files individually.

@MarkG_108 You can go on OSM and right click a location. In the contex menu select "show address". Then in the menu on the left side also the coordinates are displayed.

@99 I know about that link, but the wikipedia page for JTileDownloader states that it is blocked by the servers. And at least when I tried it I could not get it working. Thats why I posted instructions for another way to download files.

But if JTileDownloader works (again?) that would be nice!

@padu To be honest, I have no objections whatsoever against using items/objects for icons.
An icon needs to fulfill two aims:

• make sure an app can be recognized by the icon
• look nice

To fulfill the first target, it generally helps if the icon somehow represents the apps purpose and users can guess by the icon what the app will be going to do.
But that does not need to be the case. It can also be represent a logo or brand (Telegram plane icon for instance).

And yes I tried to keep/add the colors. Why? I like colors. The world is not black/white. Life is not black/white. So I personally would like to have as many colors as are good for visibility. Surely too much coloring is bad and distracting.
I personally do not like the single color icon sets used by Microsoft Office or some LibreOffice styles.
My draft just tried to follow your idea of not using objects. Removing colors was not my idea.
And with other apps using objects (Dekko=envelope, notes=paper sheet, Recorder app=microphone, uTorch=bulb, settings=cogwheel, ...) I don't think we need to overdo this.

I would suggest, until we do have other icon proposals, we should leave the existing icon as it is. If we can not come up with a satisfying new icon, we may as well leave the old one.

Call for maintainers!

There are quite some core apps without a maintainer for a long time. Camera app and clock app joined that list this week.

Core apps need your help! Is there anyone with coding experience willing to take up the task? Please use the Q&A to ask around.

@padu Don't worry, I am not offended. I hope you aren't either. I was just stating my intentions.

And thanks for the ideas. @CiberSheep knows I am the same. Let's see what good comes out of that. There is always room for improvement.

@padu To be honest, I have no objections whatsoever against using items/objects for icons.
An icon needs to fulfill two aims:

• make sure an app can be recognized by the icon
• look nice

To fulfill the first target, it generally helps if the icon somehow represents the apps purpose and users can guess by the icon what the app will be going to do.
But that does not need to be the case. It can also be represent a logo or brand (Telegram plane icon for instance).

And yes I tried to keep/add the colors. Why? I like colors. The world is not black/white. Life is not black/white. So I personally would like to have as many colors as are good for visibility. Surely too much coloring is bad and distracting.
I personally do not like the single color icon sets used by Microsoft Office or some LibreOffice styles.
My draft just tried to follow your idea of not using objects. Removing colors was not my idea.
And with other apps using objects (Dekko=envelope, notes=paper sheet, Recorder app=microphone, uTorch=bulb, settings=cogwheel, ...) I don't think we need to overdo this.

I would suggest, until we do have other icon proposals, we should leave the existing icon as it is. If we can not come up with a satisfying new icon, we may as well leave the old one.

@padu You certainly do have a point with the repo's name. That idealy should be changed to contacts-app.
Thanks also for your detailed explanation of your point of view.

So far I never heard any complains about the apps icon. But maybe, using the idea of the other icon, we can get something in the line of the old icon but pick up you idea about not using objects.

This is just a quick (and not very good) gimp mockup. But hopefully it shows my idea.
Take the old icons face (maybe even more generalized) and use the colored right side of the other icon.
This way users will still recognize the icon because it uses some old elements but it is not facilitating an object. (As long as humas don't count as objects. ).

@PhoenixLandPirat That icon I don't know, but looks nice too. I guess it is an very old icon? Not sure if it would blend into the other icons that well.

@cliffcoggin If that is the case for you, you are one of very few rational people.
Of course the content matters. But when browsing through (unknown) books, you likely pick the prettiest book. Same applies for chocolate or humans. Otherwise there would be no need for fancy dresses, makeup or product designers. The first impression is important for meetings or dates too.

But getting off topic I am.

@cliffcoggin Icons are to an app what a cover is to a book. So I do believe, a bad icon can significantly reduce an apps appeal and usage numbers. And they are good fun.
But certainly there are more important things in life.

Just installed LibreOffice 7.0.0 at work today and read the release notes. They do put a lot of effort in icon design! There must be something to it.

I was just about to say something similar. address book. A book. Left side photo, right side details, (old-style) bookmark. So the design does make sense somehow.

Either way people will get used to it. But I do agree with @CiberSheep , the red does add some color to the icon to make it better stick out. But I guess, without it would do the job likewise.

Just as an idea, would replacing some of the lines with something number-like look good?
Move photo up a bit, have one line underneath, have some numbers on the right hand side? Hm.

@Keneda

I know. Brian unpublished it, because he thought it will not work anymore. But after people reported it as still working, he published it again.

@Keneda

Sprint is still available in OpenStore. And it does still work. Not all features might be working though.