Prune is an application for viewing, editing and converting coordinate data from GPS systems. Basically it's a tool to let you play with your GPS data after you get home from your trip.
Screenshot from a Linux system showing
the map view and altitude profile
It can load data from arbitrary text-based formats (for example, any tab-separated or comma-separated file) or Xml, or directly from a GPS receiver. It can display the data (as map view using openstreetmap images and as altitude profile), edit this data (for example delete points and ranges, sort waypoints, compress tracks), and save the data (in various text-based formats). It can also export data as a Gpx file, or as Kml/Kmz for import into Google Earth, or send it to a GPS receiver.
Some example uses of Prune include cleaning up tracks by deleting wayward points - either recorded by error or by unintended detours. It can also be used to compare and combine tracks, convert to and from various formats, compress tracks, export data to Google Earth, or to analyse data to calculate distances, altitudes and so on.
Furthermore, Prune is able to display the tracks in 3d format (like the hike plots on this site) and lets you spin the model round to look at it from various directions. You can also export the model in POV format so that you can render a nice picture using Povray. You can also create charts of altitudes or speeds. It can also load Jpegs and read their coordinates from the exif tags, and export thumbnails of these photos to Kmz format so that they appear as popups in Google Earth. If your photos don't have coordinates yet, Prune can be used to connect them (either manually or automatically using the photo timestamps) to data points, and write these coordinates into the exif tags.
Prune is written in Java, so as long as your platform has a Java runtime (at least version 1.5) including GUI libraries then it should work. It was developed using eclipse and subversion on Linux, and has been tested on Linux (Mandriva 2009 and Debian Lenny with Sun JRE 1.6) and Windows XP (Home and Professional, with Sun JRE 1.5 and 1.6). It has also been shown to work on Mac OSX (Snow Leopard, using the standard 1.5 JRE), Mandriva 2010.1 using the free OpenJDK JRE, Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, Elive 2.0, Sun Solaris, Microsoft Vista and Microsoft 7. Any bug reports, feature requests, suggestions and improvements are welcome.
Currently Prune is at version 11.1 (since August 2010), but development of further features is ongoing and progress is given in the development page. Again, any help to improve it would be gratefully received. In particular any examples of data which is incorrectly parsed, and any updates to the translations offered would be very welcome (see the translation wiki). Prune is released under the Gnu GPL which specifies what you can do with the program and its source code.
NEWS : Prune is featured in a four-page review of the December 2009 issue of Linux Magazine! (But only the English version)
Thanks to volunteer translators, Prune supports the following languages:
English
Deutsch
Schwiizerdüütsch
Español
Français
Italiano
Polski
中文 (Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
Português (do Brasil)
Nederlands
Čeština
The following are partially supported:
Türkçe
Româneşte
Afrikaans
Indonesian
Farsi
Blue = Prune used, Green = language supported, Yellow = language partially supported
The map on the right shows where Prune is being used in the world. Blue areas show where users of Prune have reported its use. Green areas show countries where the official language is supported by Prune, so Prune could be used there. And finally, yellow areas show partial support (for the Turkish, Romanian and Indonesian languages). Feel free to help update this map by reporting your country either by email or on the forum thread.
Latest additions: Finland (July 2010 by email), Russia (July 2010 by email), UAE (June 2010 by email), Alaska (June 2010 by email), Canada, April 2010 (by email), Norway, January 2010 (from the forum); Sweden, January 2010 (from the forum)
Amazingly we're still waiting to hear from anyone using Prune in a Spanish-speaking country, so please get in touch if you're using Prune in Spain or in central or southern America. Similarly is there anyone from Ireland, or anywhere in Africa?
Thanks to all the translators and contributors so far!
Some of the major features of Prune include:
Some of the things which Prune does not do include:
Some other things which Prune does not do include:
See the dependencies page for how to get these additional programs, or see the GPS links for other GPS-related software.
Because you can use it to prune your GPS tracks to remove the unwanted bits.
Currently Prune is at version 11. See the downloads page for more information on the stable release or the development page for forthcoming features and current progress.
As to the question, "why is it called version 11 instead of version 0.3.12c or something", the answer is that it's an attempt to keep it simple. Large, complicated programs need a complicated version number, with major, minor and patch release information inside. Too many small applications (in my opinion) suffer from the desire to copy this scheme, either perpetually remaining on 0.x releases, reluctant to make the bold statement that they have now reached mythical "1.0" status, or making small improvements to their first release and incrementing to 1.1.x for ever. For Prune, it doesn't make sense to invent a "goal-line" of 1.0 release status, and the simple numbering scheme (1, 2, 3, ...) reflects the increase in functionality for each release.
In accordance with this, the current version of Prune is number eleven, and not version one point one.
Prune is free software and everyone can help. The easiest way to contribute is to add or fix some of the international translations. Just head over to the translation wiki and edit the page (like editing Wikipedia, but easier). These changes will then get incorporated into the next build of Prune. You can also suggest a new language there if yours isn't currently provided.
Another way to help out is to give feedback on what you like, what you don't like, what doesn't work for you or what additional features you'd like to see. You can send this feedback via email (use the address at the bottom of the page), or via Prune's sourceforge forums.
You can see a selection of screenshots of Prune in action or read some How-tos for Prune functions (this page is now also available in French, German and Spanish). If you're having problems with running Prune, see problem-solving for tips. To see how Prune has been reported in the internet, see internet fame. You can also see a few demo videos, or to get going straight away, head for the Prune downloads page. Previous versions and change history are given in the history, and suggested features in the wishlist. For more general GPS information including related software, see the GPS section.
Prune is hosted by 
and has its own project page there with forums for bug reports and feedback. However, note that Sourceforge censors its content for users from certain countries - these policies are not shared by activityworkshop.net or Prune's authors, and contributions are welcome from anyone regardless of their IP address. If you want to help with Prune but are blocked by sourceforge.net's policies, please contact activityworkshop directly by email.