[mkgmap-dev] Magic highway symbols on Vista CX failing

Fri Jul 31 18:54:41 BST 2009

Hello

I seem to have a problem with the default style and the highway tagging 
on my Garmin Vista CX with mkgmap rev. 1114. When I tag 
highway=secondary, name=Grand River and ref=MI 123, the result is a road 
with name "Road". It works as expected, however, with highway=primary.

So I did some research and I think the problem is that not all of the 
"magic" symbols in 
src/uk/me/parabola/mkgmap/osmstyle/actions/HighwaySymbolFilter.java are 
available on the unit. Also they are named wrongly for this unit.

I made an OSM test file[1] to check all symbol names given in the above 
source file. It contains parallel road segments with
ref=MI 43
name=Grand River I-VI
and highway tags of 
motorway,trunk,primary,secondary,tertiary,residential respectively.

Then I used a slightly modified default line style[2] (which assigns one 
highway symbol to each of the above road types) to generate a map[3] 
with the --gmapsupp command switch. After uploading the result to my 
Vista CX, it renders like in this picture[4]. The styles are (from 
bottom to top): interstate,shield,round,hbox,box,oval.

Some remarks:
* Styles "interstate" and "shield" look exactly like hbox and box but 
they prepend "US" and "Hwy." to the reference (only appears when 
hovering the pointer over the street). This is not so useful for OSM 
data, since the US tagging scheme in the Wiki says those should be 
included in the ref tag (i.e. ref="I 94" or ref="US 127").
* Style "box" is misnamed, as it produces an oval
* Style "oval" does not work, it seems to break the entire name of the road
* Style "round" is misnamed, it produces a framed box

I don't know how other units render these symbols, so I can't say 
whether the names should be changed or not. But I do think that "oval" 
should at least not be used in the default style for secondary roads, as 
it actually breaks the name display on my (not quite uncommon) unit.

If you need more information or want me to run more tests, please let me 
know.

Alexander

[1] http://alex.wittig.name/sonstiges/mkgmap/test.osm
[2] http://alex.wittig.name/sonstiges/mkgmap/lines
[3] http://alex.wittig.name/sonstiges/mkgmap/gmapsupp.img
[4] http://alex.wittig.name/sonstiges/mkgmap/P1020125.JPG