A product of Prime Suspect Software

What is Utopia?

Utopia is an stand-alone application that reads GPX and LOC files from geocaching.com, and presents the information in a list format. The list indicates the type of cache, how far away it is from your home coordinates (or whatever coordinates you want to use), and the direction. It shows the name and owner of the cache. If the data is from a GPX file, rather than an LOC file, the list can also display the date it was placed, the type and container size of the cache, difficulty and terrain ratings, and whether or not it contains travel bugs. An icon will graphically indicate the found/not-found status of the last 4 logs made to that cache. Also, the listings will be color coded to indicate whether or not you have found the cache, and if it's owned by you.

You can click on any list entry and it will launch your browser to display the cache page (normal or printer friendly, encrypted or decrypted), or a street map (using your choice of either MapQuest or Rand McNally websites), aerial view of the cache, or a topo map view. You can sort the data, and filter it by distance, cache type, container size, and cache title. You can attach text notes to a cache, and mark caches for later reference.

Any cache you don't want to be displayed can be added to the Ignore List, and will no longer be displayed on the list.

You can export the waypoint data in formats that can be opened in Street Atlas, MapSource, G7ToWin, or EasyGPS/ExpertGPS. You can also export the data as a fully customizable CSV file, which allows you do things like open the list in an Excel spreadsheet, or create “pushpin” files that can imported into MS Streets & Trips.

If you install the freeware G7ToWin program, Utopia can use it as a silent conduit to upload waypoints directly to your GPS unit. This works for Garmin, Magellan, and Lowrance GPS units.

When exporting or uploading waypoints, Utopia can alter the waypoint name to indicate the type and size of cache, and difficulty and terrain ratings (if the data originates from a GPX file). It can also add waypoint information to the waypoint's comment field, if that's supported by the GPS. The waypoint name and comment data are fully customizable, and can included any data that's displayed on the list, as well as constant strings.

While Utopia is primarily designed to use GPX files, it also works with LOC files downloaded from geocaching.com, but in a limited way (as they only contain a small subset of the information that GPX files contain). However, unlike EasyGPS, when you open multiple LOC files (or GPX files), Utopia allows you to merge them together. Any duplicates are automatically filtered out. You can also have GPX and LOC file data together in the same list. You can save the merged list as a Data Set file, which allows you to reload the entire list from a single file, instead of having to open each LOC or GPX file individually.

View screenshots of Utopia here. (Version 0.9.3 images displayed. New images available soon.)

Download the latest version (v0.9.4 Oct 20, 2003): Utopia_094.zip (2,888,555 bytes)

Check out the latest build for the next release here. The latest intermediate Beta build is now available. Downloads on the page should be considered “works in progress”, but should be stable. If you've requested a function to be added to Utopia, you'll find it here first.

You must un-install any previous version before installing a new one. You may receive a message say that not all the components could be removed. That's okay. The file containing your settings will remain, plus any cache notes you've made. All other files should be removed. By retaining the settings file, the new version will be able to work as soon as you install it.

NOTE: This version is fully functional. However, the help text is only about half complete. Most things are pretty obvious, but if there's something you're have problems with, please email me at .

Download the latest App.ini file: App-ini.zip (3,552 bytes)
Utopia is designed so that many changes to GPX files can be handled by simply upgrading its App.ini control file. This file is designed to work with the 0.9.4 release. This latest version adds support for the new CITO Event (Cache In Trash Out). Using the original v0.9.4 App.ini file, these event caches will appear labeled as Unknown. By upgrading to the new App.ini file, they will appear as a separate type, labeled CITO. You will also be able to filter them in the Main Options dialog screen. To use, simply download the App-ini.zip file, and extract it to the Utopia directory. Use this file only if you have already downloaded and installed version 0.9.4 of Utopia.

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Other Downloads:

• G7ToWin

• Encryptix Hint Encoder/Decoder

• Visual Basic 5 Runtime library

• Visual Basic 6 Runtime library

You must have the Visual Basic 5 and 6 Runtime Libraries to use Utopia. Unless you're running under an old operating system (like W95), you should already have the necessary Visual Basic Runtime files installed on you PC.

A Note About GPX and LOC Files

Utopia is designed to work with the GPX and LOC files downloaded from geocaching.com. Files retrieved from other sources, or processed through other programs may not work.

GPX files contain all the data needed to fully populate the Utopia display. LOC files, however, contain only a very small subset of the data available in GPX files. As such, many of the display columns will be blank when using LOC files. For example, LOC files do not contain the date a cache was placed, so that column will be blank. Also, that status of a cache (whether or not you have found it) is not in a LOC file, so all caches will be listed as unfound.

If you will only be using LOC files, you can use the View menu to turn off the displaying of the columns that aren't used.

LOC files contain the cache title and owner concatenated together, joined with the word “by”. Utopia makes a best effort to parse these out into individual values, but in certain circumstances, it can be fooled. For example, if the cache owner is “The Four by Four Squad”, and they place “The Cache by the Sea”, in the LOC file, the only value will be “The Four by Four Squad by The Cache by the Sea”. Using “ by ” as a delimiter, this could be parsed in any of three different ways. GPX files contain separate data fields for the Title and Owner. There are actually 2 separate Owners. There is the “real” owner, and the “listed” owner. The “listed” owner will be used whenever available, as that corresponds to what is displayed on the cache page. However, if the “listed” owner is blank, the program will display the “real” (i.e. the registered user name which submitted the cache) owner name in its place. The “real” owner name is always used to determine those caches that are owned by you.

Quick Start Guide

If you've never used Utopia before, here's how to get up and running.

1. Unzip the file, and run SETUP.EXE to install the application. This should put a Utopia icon in your start menu.

2. Start the application. You can resize the window to whatever size you wish. The program will remember the size and location.

3. Press F7, or select General Options from the Options menu. Enter your Reference Point Coordinates. This is the latitude and longitude that all distances will be calculated from. You can give these locations names, and save and recall them. For now, just enter a latitude and longitude.

4. Enter your geocaching.com User ID. This is used to identify which caches you own.

That's it. You can now open GPX and LOC files that have been downloaded from geocaching.com. Utopia supports automatic exporting into G7ToWin and EasyGPS. Open the Export Options dialog to set up the programs. Using G7toWin is highly recommended, as it will act as a conduit between Utopia and you GPS, allowing you to send the caches you've selected in Utopia directly to you GPS without any intervening steps. Download G7ToWin from the link above, and unzip it into its own folder. Start the program and configure it for your GPS unit, and save the configuration. Then, in Utopia, open the Export Options dialog, and click on the G7ToWin tab. Click on the Program Location button, and indicate where the G7ToWin executable file is located. Once that is done, Utopia can send waypoints directly into G7ToWin, or use it to transfer waypoints to your GPS.

You can send waypoints to EasyGPS as well. Click on the EasyGPS tab in the Export Options dialog, and indicate where the executable is located.

Automatic exporting is done through the panel on the status bar with the blue arrow. Right click on it to display the options menu. Select if you want to export to G7ToWin, EasyGPS, or your GPS unit. Then choose if you want to export marked caches or selected caches. Once that's set up, you can initiate an export by simply double-clicking on that panel in the status bar.

New in release 0.9.4:

• A column indicating the size of the cache container has been added to the main list.

• You can now filter caches by cache size. If you don't like doing micros, for example, you can simply filter them out.

• When exporting files to G7ToWin, EasyGPS, MapSource, or your GPS (via G7ToWin), you have full control over the formatting of the waypoint ID. This is done using the same replacement codes already used to format other export field. If you're upgrading from a previous version of Utopia, it will automatically convert the old setting into the appropriate replacement codes.

• New replacement codes added for cache container size.

• New replacement codes - %DR1% and %TR1%. These will return the cache Difficulty and Terrain ratings. However, the ratings are converted from the standard 1 to 5 system with ½ step increments, to a 1 to 9 system. This allows a rating to be expressed in a single character, making it possible to incorporate them into a waypoint ID. The replacement codes for the original rating system are still available.

• Locationless (Reverse) caches are now supported. You may wish to turn off the Distance filter when dealing with Locationless data, since the coordinates associated with them can be just about anywhere.

• In the past, GPX and LOC files saved on some non-Windows systems could cause problems, due to a difference in the way records are terminated within the files. An option has been added to automatically convert these files from the Unix type terminators to the DOS/Windows type terminators. A temporary file used for this - the original file will remain unchanged.

• When opening a file from the File menu, a new file-type drop-down is now available to display both GPX and LOC files at the same time.

• Added an option to the Quick Export menu to allow the export of all listed caches. This saves a few mouse clicks when you want to export the entire list. Previously, Quick Export could only be used for Marked or Selected items.

• Ability to open GPX files saved from the Watcher program.

• Removed the shlwapi.dll file from the installation package. All Windows operating systems should already have this file. Including it in the installation package was causing some problems on a few systems. This will also help reduce the size of the download.
  
  
  

Known Issues With This Release

• Not an issue with Utopia, but with G7ToWin. Some newer Garmin units (GPS72, for example) have a waypoint option that determines if the waypoint is displayed on the unit's map screen. When waypoints are transmitted to the unit, this option is not being turned on by default, so the waypoints aren't visible on the map display. I'm working with the G7ToWin author to resolve this. As a work-around, you can export your waypoints to EasyGPS, and upload via that program.

• Web-cam caches that you have logged may not indicate that you have logged them. This is not a Utopia bug, but an error in the GPX file generated by geocaching.com.

New in release 0.9.3:

• Log Status Indicator. Graphically displays the found/not-found status of the last four logs posted to a cache (excluding note type logs).

New in release 0.9.2:

• New columns to display the Difficulty and Terrain ratings for a cache.

• New replacement codes - %DR% and %TR%. These will return the cache Difficulty and Terrain ratings. They can be used anywhere replacement codes are supported.

• Save merged files as a single data-set. This is mostly for those who use LOC files. If you open a number of LOC files directly from geocaching.com, there was no way to save the data and re-open it at a later time. You can now save and restore the entire data-set. Note that even data that has been filtered out of the display will also be saved. Duplicates that were removed during the merge process are not saved.

• Saved data-set files can be opened in the same way as GPX or LOC files. You can drop them on the main display, or the program's desktop icon. If you associate the file type (.UT1) with Utopia, you can simply double-click on the file to load in into Utopia. There is an option available to automatically set file associations.

• Code fixed to correct a problem when uploading waypoints to a GPS from the File menu.

• Code fixed to correct a problem where the status bar count display of selected caches was not being updated in certain specific circumstances.
  
  
  

Features in the works for the next release:

• Greater control of the number of logs displayed when showing a cache page. You'll be able to select a specific number of logs, instead of the defaults. You will also be able to show logs on Printer Friendly cache displays.

• Support for Benchmark LOC files.

• Ability to click on the log status icon, and see the actual text for the cache page, plus the last 5 logs.

• Completed help text. Eventually. Really.
  
  
  

Setting up G7ToWin to work with Utopia:

Installing. Download the latest version of G7ToWin from the link above. Create a directory on your system, such as “c:\program files\g7towin”. Unzip all the files into that directory. That's it. No installation programs to run. G7ToWin does not write anything into your registry. To uninstall, just delete the folder.

Setting up G7ToWin for your GPS. Open the folder you created for G7ToWin. Click on the g7towin.exe executable file to start the program. Under the File menu, click on Configuration. Select your type of GPS (Garmin, Magellan, Lowrance/Eagle). Select the COM Port for your GPS data cable. Click the Save Configuration button (important!). Now, click on the Icon Property tab at the top. Set the Icon Family for your brand of GPS. The exact name may not be listed. If not, find something close. It should work. Again, click the Save Configuration button (again, important!). Click the OK button to close the configuration dialog.

Setting up the template. Utopia can assign different waypoint icons to your caches, to indicate if they've been found, are unfound, or if they're owned by you. This is done by assigning these icons to a template g7towin file, and telling Utopia to examine that file. When you installed Utopia, it added a file called “template.g7t” to its folder. Under G7ToWin's File menu, select, the Open option. Navigate to the Utopia folder (probably “c:\Program Files\Utopia”) and open the file “template.g7t”. Be sure that the file type is “.g7t” or you won't be able to see it. After click the Open button, the dialog will close, but you won't see anything different. You need to select List, under the Waypoints menu. You should then see three waypoints listed, labeled FOUND, OWNED, AND UNFOUND. Double-click on each one, to bring up the edit dialog. Simply change the icon to the one you want displayed, and click the Save WPT button. (If you won't be using GPX files, you only need to set the UNFOUND icon. It will be used for all waypoints.) Do not change the waypoint name! Change only the icon. When you're done, select Save As from the File menu, and save the file back to the Utopia folder, using the same “template.g7t” name. You can then close the G7ToWin program.

Adding the settings to Utopia. This is the easy part. Start up Utopia. Under the Options menu, click on Export Options. Now click on the G7ToWin tab. Under Program Location, click on the yellow folder button. Navigate to the folder you created for G7ToWin. Select the executable file, and click the Okay button. Now click the yellow folder next to the words “Set icon modifiers via an existing g7t file”. There will first be an information dialog. Click Okay to close it. Select the template file you just saved, and click the Open button. A confirmation message should appear. Close it, and you should see the icon modifier data has been imported into the input fields. That's it!