[mkgmap-dev] character repertoires

Tue Feb 19 21:04:14 GMT 2013

Hi

On 13/02/13 20:04, Robert Joop wrote:
> There is support for a number of character sets in mkgmap, but do we have
> any collected wisdom about what character repertoires are supported on
> our devices?
> While at the hack weekend, I tried some latin2 on my new device and was
> pleasantly surprised that “šř” appeared in a street name – on my old
> GPSmap 60CSx with the very same gmapsupp.img, I see them as what looks
> like “.Ø” on the map and “◊Ø” in the tooltip when hovering over it.

I hoped someone would reply with a detailed answer!  I'm not an expert 
on the different devices.  I am sure that the 'old' devices such as the 
Legend Cx and ones of that era, only supported the one character set. 
There may have been different versions sold in different regions with 
different character sets. But the standard European one was code-page 
1252 of course.

Newer devices seem to support a number of character sets. I have 
verified that my Nuvi 1490 can do Arabic script (code page 1256)
for example. I would guess that it includes many/all of the western 
European from Greek to Cyrillic.

I believe it is still true that only devices sold in Asia are capable of
Chinese/Japanese etc. characters - although you can download replacement 
firmware that includes them from Garmin.

But I'd be glad to be corrected by someone who has tried it all out.

..Steve