[mkgmap-dev] My involvement in mkgmap and the default style

Fri Jul 13 18:48:16 BST 2012

Hi Marko,

> The mkgmap default style has not been changed much ever since the
> current style language was implemented.
>
> I was appointed the maintainer a couple of years ago, after I had
> submitted some patches.
>
> I am sorry for my low level of activity around mkgmap in the past year.

You are welcome. There haven't been complaints on the list so the 
default style seems to be ok ;-)

> I started refactoring the default style, but I had to suspend that,
> because I got too busy at my day job. Two weeks ago, I made the deadline
> and started vacation from work, but not from family. :-)
>
> I think I could pick up where I left with regard to splitting the
> default style, some time in August or later.

Yes, that would be great if you can finish that. I am not a big style 
implementor but I have the feeling that some changes to the 
implementation would be great. Including of styles seems to be not very 
intuitive (I must admit I haven't tried that yet so don't blame me if 
that's not the case... ;-).

>
> Long term, I am going to escape the Garmin world. The USB interface on
> my Edge 705 died last October or November, so that I can no longer
> transfer any saved GPS traces to the computer. So, I bought myself a
> SonyEricsson Xperia Active for replacing both my GPS receiver and a
> decade-old dumbphone. There was some initial firmware trouble, but now
> with the SportyPal bike mount and OsmAnd 0.8 I am satisfied. The GPS
> accuracy may be slightly worse than that of the Edge, but the Bing
> aerial image coverage largely compensates for that. Battery life is not
> a problem, thanks to my DIY dynamo-powered USB charger. Also, I like the
> offline vector maps and offline routing that OsmAnd 0.8 supports. The
> bicycle routing might currently be even worse than Garmin's if possible,
> but the map display will not freeze while recalculating, and I get
> spoken turn instructions, even for following a GPX trace.
>
> I wonder if it would make sense to share some front-end code and area
> (boundary) processing code between mkgmap and OsmAndMapCreator. Both
> have been written in Java, after all. I have deliberately tried to avoid
> touching program code too much, because I get enough of that in my day
> job (writing C and C++).

The boundary processing is quite special in mkgmap and I don't know the 
OsmAndMapCreator. But maybe OsmAndMapCreator may share the precompiled 
boundary format and the way how they are used.

>
> Even if I will likely not be using Garmin maps much, I plan to keep
> updating the map of Finland at http://www.polkupyoraily.net/osm/ (and
> fixing any issues reported by mkgmap) until someone else volunteers.
>
> Best regards,
>
> 	Marko

Have fun!
WanMil