[mkgmap-dev] patch to correct plazas in default style

Sun Mar 1 04:23:01 GMT 2009

Hi Clinton,

Sorry for the delay, I've been away from the internet for the past week.

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 6:36 AM, Clinton Gladstone
<clinton.gladstone at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 7:50 PM, Ben Konrath <ben at bagu.org> wrote:
>
>> I just discovered the "human made area" Garmin polygon (0x13) which seems to
>> be a better choice for these pedestrian squares. An updated patch is
>> attached. Let me know how it works for you.
>
> Hm... this polygon type (0x13) is not documented in the
> garmin_feature_list.csv file in the mkgmap resources directory, is it?
> Where did you find it?

I found it in the cgpsmapper manual - it seems to have more Garmin
codes than the garmin_feature_list.csv file. You can find it here:

http://www.cgpsmapper.com/download/cGPSmapper-UsrMan-v02.4.3.pdf

> I tried out a somewhat different approach for for squares and plazas:
> I found an unused polygon type (0x1b) and added a tiled bitmap for
> this polygon to the TYP file I use. The bitmap, with a lot of
> imagination, represents what I could picture as a flagstoned or
> cobblestoned area. As well, I added 0x1b to my polygon style file.
>
> I  have attached a Mapsource screen shot of the result. The screen
> shot is of Piazza San Pietro in Vatican City. Personally, I think this
> looks rather nice, but that is a matter of taste and politics. ;-)

Yeah, I agree, it looks better than what I'm using now.

> However, I'm not sure what consequences these polygon types would have
> for pedestrian/bicycle routing. It would be inconvenient if
> pedestrians were always routed around plazas and squares as if these
> areas were impassible obstacles.

That's actually a good point. Giving it a little thought here ... Even
if these area were marked as a park, would pedestrians be routed
through the area in any direction? That definitely doesn't make sense
for the parks or squares I know here in San Jose. I would rather
specify the paths in the parks and have the pedestrians routed through
those. Thoughts?

This all said, perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves here. So far
it seems that most people are using mkgmap to generate maps for
driving. Maybe we should revisit this when more people are looking for
walking maps. I'm not even sure using a Garmin GPS for pedestrian
routing is a normal use case. Maybe that's why we couldn't find an
Garmin polygon type to describe plazas and squares correctly. I know I
definitely use my GPS when I'm walking around San Jose but it really
never occurred to me to use the routing feature for walking probably
because I enjoy walking down particular streets for the atmosphere
they have or if they are pedestrian friendly (low traffic, have
sidewalks, don't smell etc.), not necessarily if it's the best route
to my destination.

Anyway, just some thoughts here.

Cheers, Ben