I found Create-IMG script which uses wget and mkgmap to create country maps. There I’ve seen the MASTER.TYP file. I supposed it was one of the default mkgmap TYP’s
There has to be some serious money involved when using a commercial server. Lots of money to be earned and donated. A dedicated server with 1 or 2 cores, 2gb ram, >200GB disk space and ~5TB monthly bandwidth is surely not going to be cheap (i.e. well over 300 Euro per month). I also would prefer not to have money involved, a donate button and adds on the site. The current server and bandwidth is sponsored which is worth a lot!
Thanks for the tip on the filehosting services. I’ll check them out.
Ligfietser, I’ll use the Mapnik stylesheet for one of my next updates. Perhaps it could be moved to a trac/svn repository so that others can collaborate on it, for maintenance and improvements?
Thats great Lambertus, hope somebody can put some time in it to improve the typ files.
If you have questions you can always contact me.
The problem with any TYP file that is distributed with mkgmap is that it needs to be compatible with all GPS units. As I mentioned a few weeks ago when you posted here, any TYP file that uses borders along roads will look horrible in older GPS units like the GPSMap series.
I understand your point, its better to have two TYP files, one for the older units, one for the newer.
In my own Openfietsmap I offer two TYP files, one for older GPS units with light border, one with darker borders. In Mapsource it’s easy to switch between those TYP files.
See http://sites.google.com/site/openfietsmap/news/12-12-2010
The main problem is the gmapsupp file. If I don’t want to offer two different sets of gmapsupps, is there a tool where the user can change the TYP file within the gmapsupp (without needing Basecamp or Mapsource)?
Hmm, I apparently missed that comment. Thanks.
I would really love to be able to customise requests (allow different TYP files, user definable series id’s so that you can install multiple maps in MapSource very easilly, add contour lines, etc), but it would make many more requests unique and therefore would likely kill any caching that is currently helping to keep this service running.
I’m thinking about offloading some of the bigger standard countries to RapidShare (or equivalent), but that’s not optimal. I’m sure it will confuse people. Besides, I could also point towards the OSM wiki Garmin maps dowload list (actually, I’m already doing that).
The other option I’m thinking about, which is radically different and actually one of my older ideas, is to have the server host only the tiles (zipped) and meta information and an Java application that runs on the user’ computer that builds, maintains and installs custom maps.
Pretty sure one of these tools can do that but I’m not running Windows, so can’t check it.
If you offer country maps, it’s not gonna be 5TB per month. I’m at around 500GB per day on average. During summer it spiked at around 1.5TB a day on my download servers (meaning bout 700-800 map downloads for Germany, 200-300 Italy, 200 Austria and so on – not even offering Europe for download).
@ Lambertus:
Isn’t it possible to build your program (generating Garmin maps) into an already available Mapping program such as QlandkarteGT or KDE’s Marble?
They have a program in which you can view an OSM map, and you already have a program on your website that turns the OSM tiles into a Garmin map. To me that sounds like 1+1=2, but I’m not a programmer…
Then you could just host the popular country maps on your site, and let users make their own special maps.
Thanks for the statistics. I guess you (and other well established country map providers) are catching the bulk of the downloads then, which limits the downloads here. The available disk space is also limiting the number of possible downloads per day.
May I ask how much you pay for your bandwidth, or is your hosting sponsored as well?
I have around 500 unique visitors on the download server (many more on the website itself) and use about 50-120 GB/day bandwidth.
Possibly, I haven’t really looked at it yet. But thanks for the tip!
(Edit: I’ve also found uDig, jMapViewer, MapPanel, Java GeoTools)
The point of my service is: I want people to be able to make their own map (e.g. cross-country) and to make this as user friendly as possible. “Simple” country extracts in various flavours can be (and, ofcourse, are) hosted by others, like extremecarver and ligfietser.
My hosting and my website server is both sponsored by Domainbox. If not I would have to stop (at current price level for downloads like at Amazon S3 one could not make up for it by adverts) I have another donor for the server where I render the maps. But as I don’t want to abuse it, I don’t offer any maps of Europe or North America (would in any case be useless, as most data is just imports and that is not what I understand as worthwile).
For many people I think Europe is no real question, as it takes too long for download. But for all people with a 16MB down or higher, I would believe that if the download servers are quick enough, they just download. Few people got any knowledge bout costs of server and would not even think that such a server is expensive.
Thanks!
I think this is a really good idea. Sure, it would put more of the work on the actual users, but that is not such a bad thing.
If you could actually choose the tiles you want, via slippy-map or some-such, and download them from within the program, then you would really have something good.
Just a thought. I only wish I could help. Sadly my programming skills date back to the acoustic coupler and mainframe days.
Thanks for all YOUR hard work.
Just one more thought about typ files: from the little I have gleaned with my experiments on my Zumo 660 is that support for them in this unit is broken. I tried to create a dashed line for dirt roads (like what we used to have in MS and the 60CSx), as they are now all but indistinguishable from minor roads. The result: anything transparent and any secondary colour and border in lines are black.
I have no knowledge of this, but I suspect that some of the newer Nuvis will have the same ‘features’, as the Zumo is very similar to Nuvis.
And yes, thanks again for this great service!
Kind regards,
Peter.
Peter,
Did you check with mapsettoolkit if the Family ID of the map corresponds with the one in the Typ file?
You also need to ‘instruct’ mapsource that you have added a typ file otherwise it wont see it if you send the maps
with typ file to your unit. As far as i know nuvis will work with the typ files, but Im not sure how compatible they are with
the latest units.
Yes, the FID is normally correct, but even when it isn’t it makes no difference. I can see the effect of the typ alright, it’s just that the display is not what the program that created it (gentypg) says it should look like. As I said, primary colours are ok, but borders and secondary colours I can have in any colour, as long as it is black. (Henry Ford)
I see you use gentyp. Have you tried to edit the typ file with http://ati.land.cz/gps/typdecomp/editor.cgi?
No, I don’t. I have used gentypG to create just two line styles: http://gwprojects.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1126&p=23042&e=23042
I tried the online editor, but I can’t see how I can create a dashed line there. gentypg lets me create patterned lines, whereas the online editor seem to allow only solid lines.
It does support patterns. If you set bitmap height > 0 you can see a bitmap editor to fill in a pattern.
See an example here:
http://sites.google.com/site/openfietsmap/downloads/customize
Ive read that gentyp is a bit outdated and maybe doesnt support the newer units anymore.
Yes, the author wrote that gentyp is old and his prog is based on that, but he only just released a new version, see link.
OK, I get what you mean. I had another go with Typ Wiz 0.573 and here is what I get in MS:
Looks ok, but when you zoom out it looks hideous:
This is what it looks like on my zumo:
Note the black between the dashes. Also, the line is now very thin at any zoom.
Anyway, thanks for your help, but I think we are getting way off-topic here and the topic is already very long…
Kind regards,
Peter.
PS: back to my typ with solid lines, which is working.
First of all thanks for the great work with the maps.
I just downloaded some tiles for Austria and I don’t know what is wrong but there is a street missing. I can see it on the map online but when I copy the downloaded map (created some hours ago) i can’t see it in MapSource and in the GPSMap60cs.
The street I mention is in Austria->Styria->Eisenerz the road to the Leopoldsteiner Lake in the north western area of Eisenerz. As I mentioned on the online version I can see it and in MapSource and on my GPS it’s missing.
Thanks for help.