[mkgmap-dev] Tagging restaurants and categories

Tue Mar 3 03:13:15 GMT 2020

On Mon, 2 Mar 2020, Andy Townsend wrote:

>> This is a bit tougher to manage with the automatic categorization with the 
> template tags when editing in iD.
>
> First things first, I'd try and get the tagging right in OSM itself (via iD 
> or whichever other editor you're using).? For a donut place I'd have expected 
> amenity=fast_food, but maybe for some amenity=cafe would be OK for some.? I'm 
> guessing a bit here because I'm from the UK and donuts aren't really a thing 
> here - we have healthy alternatives like Greggs' Steak Bakes and Pukka Pies 
> instead :)

Yeah, I thought that there was an issue if a particular POI is tagged for 
both amenity=fast_food and cuisine=donut -- if this is the case, then 
currently as far as I know the default is that the shop will show up as 
fast_food and will not show up as their food type (donut).

If this actually can be configured with mkgmap options, then this is the 
way that needs to be pursued.  I thought this was hardcoded during the map 
conversion as this seems a bit odd that the default was to lump everything 
into fast_food.

>> it seems that perhaps only one category can be added per restaurant.
>
> I don't think that creating multiple Garmin POIs per OSM POI is possible 
> using mkgmap "out of the box".? I did experiment with it ages ago, but didn't 
> go anywhere with it as it didn't really seem beneficial - you've always got 
> the option of searching "all food and drink" to cut across subcategories.*
>

It took me a while to figure out why when I searched for donuts why I 
couldn't find Dunkin' or Krispy Kreme.  The only way to find these is to
look through "all fast food" and not "bagel/donuts" which can be annoying 
if it's 5AM and want to get some donuts on the way to work, plus Krispy 
Kreme doesn't even contain the word "Donut" in their shop name and I'd 
totally miss this as a donut shop.

It was when I took a look at the tagging for some of the independent, 
non-chain donut shops that did show up -- 100km away which would not be 
acceptable for a morning run, and then some experiments in OSM that I 
found out how to get a particular donut shop to show up on the Garmin.

The only reason why I brought up the iD issue is that if someone creates a 
new POI for Dunkin' in OSM it will contain both amenity=fast_food 
and cuisine=donut in OSM.  If amenity=fast_food was forcibly changed to 
amenity=cafe, the option to "upgrade" the tag in iD will show up and 
automatically set amenity=fast_food back, so this would be a unpleasant 
fix (plus most/all of the thousands of Dunkin' Donuts in OSM will already 
have amenity=fast_food - while it can be scripted to change all thousands 
of the shops or use of #maproulette, I don't think this is the right way 
to tag things.)

Similar issues will show up for stores like Panda Express (fast_food/
Chinese) where I think many people at least in the USA would choose this 
option if they wanted Chinese food even though it is fast_food.  As I 
don't know all locales I'm sure there are a lot of people that would find 
fast_food as an acceptable option when looking for a specific type of 
food.

This is why I believe that the ultimate "fix" had to be a change in 
the consumption of OSM data and would require a mkgmap change.  Again I 
could be wrong on this account and a mkgmap config change is all that's 
needed, as once again I'm depending on someone else's mkgmap run, and this 
would be something I should forward onto the mkgmap builder once I find 
out how to do it.

Thanks, and glad people are still using this feature on their GPS instead 
of depending on their cellular phones!