[mkgmap-dev] Description text

Thu Apr 15 22:52:41 BST 2010

Marko Mäkelä wrote:
> Is the addr:* translation currently hardcoded in mkgmap? Where is it?  
>   
I think here: MapBuilder.java
Search for "FIX MY ADDRESS".

Around it there are function calls like "p.getStreet()" and so on.

I think here could be (new) functions like "p.getWebsite" and so on called.

> I found one oddity last year: addr:housenumber='12-14' (should 
> probably be 12;14 in the OSM notation) was displayed as "12 Apt 4" if 
> I remember correctly. Also, I find the English-style order of 
> "housenumber street" and "city zip" backwards. To my knowledge, 
> continental Europe uses "street housenumber" and "zip city".
>   
Perhaps these were incorrectly tagged? The java code seems to put the 
information it receives into the information screen on your Garmin. 
There seems to be no translation whatsoever.
You could try to add logging information in the java code and get a 
small part of the area you want to debug from the osm-data.
Then you have either a file that can be easiliy loaded into an editor 
and you can see what mkgmap makes out of it.

> I think that the correct way to implement the translation would be via the 
> style file. The style file would compose a mkgmap:description from the 
> addr:*, phone, opening_hours, website, url, description and whatnot, based on 
> the type of the POI as needed.  Are there any fixed fields, such as phone 
> number encoded in some special format?
>   
I think that that would be too much.
It would be better (IMHO) to just expand a little the existing code and 
leave the style files as they are.
The benefit would be, that millions of style-file users would have to do 
nothing.

They would afterwards just see a lot more information in their Garmin units.

Dani