[mkgmap-dev] Transliteration

Thu Oct 22 12:49:53 BST 2009

Thanks Steve for having a look at it.

Steve Ratcliffe wrote:
> The thing I would like to add is that code-page is not particularly
> useful for a general purpose map such as the one you produce.  See for
> example, http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Mkgmap/i18n where you
> can see a screen shot with Russian characters.  Looks great, but you
> need firmware that supports that character set and even units that you
> buy in the country in question may not.
> 
Ok, so if I understand correctly, I should remove the --latin1 and 
--code-page parameters (the code-page already being redundant)?

> There is also a unicode/mbcs format, which I have never seen and is
> as far as I know again dependant on having firmware support and so
> would be of no use to you either, even if implemented.
> 
Well indeed, there's no point in supporting apparent obscure features in 
a general purpose map...

What's the best thing we can say to (impatient) map users that want 
readable names in maps in your opinion? Wait for improved support in 
Mkgmap or is adding transliterated names in the OSM data an option?

Btw, it seems that automatic language detection is the biggest problem 
and that most tools expect you to provide them with a source and target 
language setting. It should be fairly straightforward to compile a list 
of country poly's and default source languages to work around the 
detection step.