[mkgmap-dev] Suggestions: improvements to mkgmap --style-file= and --list-styles options

Sun Aug 9 19:35:06 BST 2009

Charlie Ferrero <charlie at cferrero.net> writes:

> 1. Currently, if you invoke mkgmap with the --style-file= tag and point 
> to a non-existent style file (or incorrect path), mkgmap continues 
> regardless (and applies the inbuilt default style, afaict).  Can I 
> suggest a patch to mkgmap that at least makes it clear that no style 
> file was found in this circumstance?  Sadly I lack the programming 
> skills to do this, but hopefully it's a relatively trivial thing to change.

I would be in favor of exiting with an error if anything goes wrong in
finding the style file.

> 2. Secondly it seems to me that mkgmap has three inbuilt styles 
> (default, noname, test) that you cannot change by editing the files in 
> the resources folder.
>
> Viz: as a new user, it confused me that I though was editing the points 
> file in the resources/default folder and invoking mkgmap with 
> --style=default I could not see any effect on the map output.
>
> By trial and error I found that only by specifying 
> --style-file=resources/default when invoking mkgmap would my changes to 
> the style file be reflected in the map.  This implies to me that the 
> "default" style rules must be inbuilt into mkgmap.  Indeed, running java 
> -jar mkgmap.jar --list-styles suggests that there are 3 different 
> inbuilt styles.  Because there was nothing to say otherwise, I had 
> assumed that I could just invoke mkgmap with --style=default (having 
> edited the style files in the resources/default folder) and directly 
> affect the output map.
>
> It might therefore be less confusing to rename the subfolders in 
> resources (or rename the output of --list-styles).  Or best of all, make 
> it clear in the documentation that mkgmap has inbuilt styles that you 
> can see if you use --list-styles, but cannot edit.  If you want to 
> create your own style you need to edit the files in the resources folder 
> and then invoke the file with --style-file= instead.

The resources/default folder is in fact the default style, but when you
run mkgmap the style is read from the jar.  So you have to rebuild a
distribution with ant before you can use it.  I will see about adding
something to README.java and the options help file that explains this
better.

Perhaps by default mkgmap should print out what it's doing, where it
read things from, and the style in use, maybe with a -q to suppress
this.  I prefer the more chatty output style of the splitter, but I
realize preferences differ.
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