[mkgmap-dev] Binary format update

Thu Sep 16 19:34:20 BST 2010

On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 12:33 PM, WanMil <wmgcnfg at web.de> wrote:
> Hi Steve,
>
> that was a quick implementation!
>
> I haven't tried so far the new binary format. I haven't found a download
> for the osmprotobuf.jar. Is there any? Download links should be added to
> the documentation and the website if the changes are merged back.

I am still in release candidate status as far as jar is concerned. At
present, I haven't set up hosting for it anyplace. The best place to
get it right now is from osmosis trunk ('osmbin.jar'), or build it
from my git repository on github.

>
> I had some thoughts if the splitter is still needed with this new
> format. The website of the new protocol tells me that the operation
> getNodesbyBoundingBox(north,south,east,west) is supported. So it should
> be possible to start mkgmap with the bbox definition of all tiles (like
> the areas.list file of the tile splitter) and a planet dump file?  The
> splitter work could be reduced to generate a reasonable areas.list file.
> Are there any objections on this?

This could be done, but the data has to be geographically sorted. I've
described how to do that, but the code implementing it hasn't been
written.

I've got a question though, why can't mkgmap generate different areas
in parallel? It seems like it should be possible and it would make it
a lot faster to render maps.

Scott