[mkgmap-dev] Question to address search

Thu Mar 25 18:23:25 GMT 2010

> WanMil wrote:
>> Hi Steve,
>>
>> I have just started to have a look on the internals of the garmin
>> fileformat. The wiki
>> (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin/Format) tells me
>> that there are the formats
>> TRE
>> NOD
>> MDR
>> SRT
>> GMP
>> DEM
>>
>> The documentation of the garmin-img sourceforge project also mentions
>> the formats not yet documented in the wiki:
>> LBL
>> RGN
>> NET
>>
>> I think LBL is the file in which the labels are stored in a non
>> searchable format. And MDR contains the same information like LBL but it
>> is searchable. Am I right?
>>
>> It would be good if you can put your current knowledge to the wiki.
>>
> WanMil - My current knowledge (or at least 95% of it) is already on the
> wiki! That's the whole idea - to allow others to pick up on it and to
> join in. Most of my own contributions have been to the MDR file page and
> the SRT file page as you'll see from the 'history' tabs of both of them.
Steve,
I think I misunderstood your email: "I tend to write up my findings on 
the .MDR file on the wiki". I just wanted to bear you out in writing 
things down to the wiki. You've already done that so that's superfluous.

>
> Please note that these pages are *not* wikipedia! Quite a bit of the
> information is highly speculative, there are great big missing bits and
> all we can say is that "this is the best we know so far".

(sometimes wikipedia is also quite speculative.....:-)

>
> You are right that the LBL, RGN and NET files have not even got pages
> started yet, though quite a bit is known about those file formats as
> mkgmap writes them. But writing those wiki pages takes time and effort.
> The primary authors of mkgmap are putting their work into actual coding
> (which is great) so it's up to others to get going on documentation.
>
> My interest in MDR is because I'd like the address-searching features to
> work better than they do, and this is an aspect of mkgmap that isn't
> really written properly yet. Some of it works, and MDR files can be
> produced using mkgmap followed by mapsource. I'm trying to take
> mapsource out of the loop.

Can you say some words about the status of the display project 
(http://svn.parabola.me.uk/display)? Does it contain the latest 
information about the file format or does it need some update? The 
revision 229 is quite old.

I am just looking for a good start point where I can get in contact with 
the garmin file format.

>
>> Hopefully this will help to make progress to this long outstanding and
>> highly demanded feature.
>>
>>
>
> The more of us there are working on it, the better!
> Steve
>

Let's light up the rest of the unknown bits!
WanMil