Using OSM offline

General talk
1

Hello,

I’m new with OSM - but I find it is an exciting project.

We are planning a cyclingtour through Easteurope for some month. I would like to use OSM for our planing and orientation. And for this I have some questions:

  1. Which format should I choose for the download of OSM-data? Is ‘map.osm’ the right format?
  2. Which software could you recommend to render offline the OSM-Data to get a map, in which I can set planningpoints for our tour?

Thanks a lot for efforts and answers,
Jan

2

You don’t say what OS you are using, but I like tangogps (only for linux) very much.

It’ll let you download maps (at different resolutions) of the area you are interested in travelling to, and cache them locally.

You can then plug in your GPS receiver to your netbook (Eg EEE701), and tangogps will show you where you are on the locally-cached map, plot your route, and save your GPS tracks (including position, altitude information, speed etc) while you are not connected to the internet.

These tracks can subsequently be used with OSM (I read them into JOSM, and prune is another nice application for looking at tracks and editing them).

More about tangogps here: http://www.tangogps.org/gps/cat/About

3

@jan:

Tell us first how you want to use the OSM data for your trip: printed on paper or on any kind of mobile device or PC?

For both cases you can study the OSM wiki at

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_on_Paper

or

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Software

4

Yes, this does depend on what OS you are using.
One option would be to download the OSM data in Garmin format, then view it in Garmin Mapsource (Windows) or Garmin Roadtrip (Mac), or QLandKarte GT (Linux/Windows).
You can use these for marking waypoints, or plotting routes etc. And you can download the waypoints/routes to a Garmin GPS device if you’re using one of those.

5

Thanks. You are right, I have to give more precise informations:
OS: windows XP Home on a Notebook.
We want to use the OSM for planning our tour (add point of interests, contacts … in the map) and of course for orientation when we are on tour.
Jan

6

@jan:

Have you tried now already some programs that display the map data either by tiles or by vector map?

What is your experience? What program comes near your aims or what feature are you missung in detail?

7

I just tried Navigator10_FREE but this is not usefull. The map is only for car-user.

Can you recommend a software which shows the OSM-Map similar to the Osmarender-representation?
Greetings Jan

8

Now I found the solution for my wishes:
http://openmtbmap.org
is not easy to understand (for a beginner) but in the end it was very helpfull!