[mkgmap-dev] Cutting down the default style

Wed Nov 9 12:10:11 GMT 2011

Marko Mäkelä <marko.makela at iki.fi> writes:

> On Tue, Nov 08, 2011 at 04:58:40PM -0500, Greg Troxel wrote:
>> I don't understand how we can be talking about "default style" and
>> "multi-layer map" at the same time.  It would seem that the default
>> style should support a map that is broadly useful to all people in
>> all circumstances (a tall order).
>
> Making the default style modular could be a mere refactoring change at
> first. It does not need to have any end-user visible effects.
>
>> It may be that we end up with a rural and and urban default style,
>> and people have to choose.
>
> If we split the default style so that it imports a number of substyle
> definitions, then it would be easy to introduce and maintain an
> urban' or 'sparse' style: it would just import a small number of the
> substyles that the default style is based on.

That sounds excellent to me.  What I was not comfortable with was
trimming the one true style.   But having a few top-level files that
include a number of substyles would be great, and I don't care whether
sparse or full is default as long as both are in-tree and maintained.
It will be an interesting experiment to see what people prefer.

>> A multi-layer map with selectable elemnts is a reason to change the
>> default style to simple when the out-of-the-box mkgmap can process
>> the files multiple times, make transparent layers according to a
>> (supplied!) config file, and then merge the results multiple layers
>> into one .img (and make multiple .gmapi/windows).  It doesn't seem
>> we are there yet.
>
> Right. The refactoring of the default style would be only a first step
> on a long path.
>
> Based on what Felix told us, we would probably also need to provide
> end-users with a simple way of converting multiple .img files to a
> single gmapsupp.img, so that users of old and new devices can make use
> of the map layers.

Agreed, and you don't have to get that old to need a single file - my
etrex vista hcx bought in spring 2009 and still being sold is like that.
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