[mkgmap-dev] Tags hiding roads?

Mon Nov 7 13:15:32 GMT 2011

David Fletcher wrote:
> I'm getting the impression that, for an ordinary user who wants to 
> make contributions to the Open Street Map community then reap the 
> reward of free mapping, what I will call "the system" as a whole is a 
> little inaccessible. 

>  As for Open Street Map / Garmin maps, I think that if a road is 
> rendered as expected on the web site, it is reasonable to expect that 
> same road to appear on my Garmin device without an ordinary user / 
> contributor having to go delving into the technicalities to get it to 
> work properly. 

Part of the problem is that OSM isn't "a map" but instead "some data".  
The default mapnik rendering on www.openstreetmap.org is just one 
example of a map that can be created from that data.  It doesn't render 
everything and it wouldn't make sense for it to.  The same's true of 
Garmin maps - no one Garmin map can be ideal for everyone (for my own 
use I create different ones for walking and driving, for example)

> At this time, I have no idea at all what a style is or how it affects 
> the working of mkgmap.

The beginners' documentation for mkgmap isn't very newbie-friendly, 
though 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mkgmap/help/How_to_create_a_map and 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mkgmap/help/Custom_styles are 
definitely worth a read if you've not seen them already.  Without doing 
anything too complicated it's possible to figure out how to add new 
entries to one of the style files so that "thing X" gets rendered a bit 
like "thing Y" but as a different Garmin item.

As well as this list there's also the OSM help site 
http://help.openstreetmap.org/ and the Garmin forum on the OSM forum 
site http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewforum.php?id=26 of course.  The 
help site (and probably the forum too) gets users of all levels of 
familiarity with the software from "someone told me I can get free 
Garmin maps here" upwards.

Cheers,
Andy