Worldwide routable Garmin maps: URL REMOVED

You can fix it yourself if that happens; all you need is to put the Oregon into the ‘Forced USB Mass Storage Mode’. It is described here for the Montana, but the same procedure applies to the Oregon: http://garminmontanagpsr.wikispaces.com/Recovery

First you’ll have to look at my maps from an international perspective:
There are hundreds of languages and scripts and only few people are able to read Roman, Cyrillic, Thai as well as Kanji to name only a few. So when I started this service I decided that Roman script and English language would be the base for my maps. Other map makers will have to provide localized maps, like Freizeitkarte.

Technically this translates to:
Before the OSM data is rendered by Mkgmap I use a custom built transliteration application to convert Cyrillic script to Roman. This application can transliterate more then just Cyrillic but the definitions for other scripts are lacking. After this step Mkgmap is used to create the Garmin tiles. For this I use the following Mkgmap parameter:

 --name-tag-list=name:en,int_name,name:zh_py,name:engels,name

This selects which name tag to use in the Garmin tiles in the order from left to right. All the name tags are documented in the OSM wiki with the exception of ‘name:engels’ which comes from the transliteration step. So the normal ‘name’ tag is only used when none of the other tags is available. This may be the cause of your missing Umlauts for cities but I think it’s unlikely the cause for the street names.

Another (remote) possible cause may be the “–latin1” Mkgmap parameter which should translate to CP1252 but this code page includes Umlauts so should not be the problem.

Typ file updating has been a manual operation up to now. I’ll include automatic updates in the scripts for the next map update.

Thanks, Lambertus - I don’t think I get the complete message, but at least I understand what codepages are.

So is there any way I can fix Umlauts, or would it require extensive tuning of the logic behind your website?

Thank you! This will help in case I come across this problem (so far all maps were fine, knock on wood…).

Happy Easter!

All the best,

Thomas.

I understand, the whole process is quite complicated to grasp at first. However, I’ve looked at the various steps in my toolchain and this is what finally goes into Mkgmap:

<node id="472822" lat="51.5208622" lon="7.2363666">
	<tag k="bus" v="yes"/>
	<tag k="highway" v="bus_stop"/>
	<tag k="name" v="HER-Vöde-/Bergstraße"/>
	<tag k="network" v="VRR"/>
	<tag k="operator" v="HCR"/>
	<tag k="public_transport" v="stop_position"/>
	<tag k="ref" v="Vöde-/Bergstraße, Herne"/>
	<tag k="name:engels" v="HER-Vode-/Bergstrasse"/>
</node>

I notice that the name tag contains the ö and ß still, but there’s also the name:engels tag from the transliteration step. And because Mkgmap is instructed to choose the name:engels over the name tag the ö and ß is lost in the final map.

The question is: should the transliteration step transliterate German special characters? And how about French ç or Turkish ş etc? I.e. do we only want to transliterate when the original script is not compatible with CP1252 or do we want to transliterate everything that is not compatible with the English script?

Is it a transliteration? I think it is English name, for example German München is Munich in English.
If you create map of the world, then you don’t have much choices. I think for now only CP1252 and int_name/name:en could be used.

Yes, it’s caused by the transliteration step:

Indeed.

Here is my experience with the new EU OFM map with an Edge 705.
I have loaded it in Mapsource / Basecamp and used it offroad on a Mountainbike and onroad on a racing bike.

In Mapsource I can say I like it very much, for the moment it is my favorite map for planning cycetours.
Really good.
For the gps there are 2 subjects to discuss however: performance and styles.

1a. performance offroad.
While Mountainbiking I use “Courses”. This means I can navigate without Turn information. This is because in terrain with a lot of turns the Edge 705 zooms out for a turn-information-screen, showing all the nearby turns you will encounter so you see nothing but a white screen left.
Navigating this way (with courses, without turn-information) only the map has to be shifted, not too much to be done for the gps, and this works fine with the EU map.
1b. performance onroad.
In this case I use turn-information. The Edge 705 comes up with a special screen showing the next -plus nearby- turn(s).
This performs bad. You hear a beep (“turn is coming”). Then you look and see an empty screen.
Checking again you may see the background drawn, then the navigation line comes and finally also the rest of the map is coming.
It performs comparable with the Open MTB map.

For me this means that at the gps I will keep using the OFM Light, since that one really performs much better.
HOPEFULLY the OFM Light will stay available in an up to date version!

  1. Styles
    a. Navigation-line.
    On my Edge 705 the navigation line is drawn before the pathes and roads.
    This means that when pathes and roads are drawn in a wide style they hide the navigaton line.
    Maybe someone could tell how to change priorities such that the navigation line would come on top of everything.
    However, I didn’t find it and therefore I allways change the road-styles such that I can always see the navigation line still.
    b. Small gps-screen.
    The Edge 705 has a very small screen where the map is shown. Just like an Etrex, by the way.
    This means not too much information should be shown at the same time since then you won’t see “the trees through the forest” anymore (in a dutch saying).
    Also wide road-styles in combination with a high density of roads / cyclepathes plus a navigation-line make the screen quite unreadable.
    Here again is a reason for narrow line-styles.
    c. Navigating offroad.
    Styles for offroad lines (pathes) need to be more clear for offroad navigating.

2a is another reason to use the OFM Light on the gps: only show the things that are really necessary to find your way while navigating.

Conclusion: for me OFM EU is a great map in Mapsource / Basecamp.
At the gps (Edge 705) I really prefer the light version (with adapted styles).

Thanks for your input GRi,
About 1b: I don’t know if the Edge has night mode display, you can try if this renders better in the full EU version
2a It’s a Garmin bug that they put the navigation line behind the road lines. In all the later units the navigation is always on top and big. You can’t change it, only making the lines much thinner, but I won’t make another typ file. You can edit the typ files and make a custom one that suits your needs.

Yes, there is no point about a typ file, i have my own typ file for every map I use. But hopefully you will continue to supply the OFM Light here as you do now, since that’s the best performing map at the Edge 705.

GRi, since you are living in the NL’s (I suppose), there will be still a light version of the benelux available at openfietsmap.nl
Because the NL’s is a very heavily mapped country you will notice the differences in performance.
For other regions in Europe I’m not so sure if the full EU version is really so much slower because it’s not so well mapped. So I’m still not convinced if a world wide lite version next to a full version is making sense. Other opinions are welcome.

Yes, I’m living in the nl. And cycling in Europe. Germany is more interesting for me than Belgium or Luxembourg.
Is it more work for mapgeneration when the area gets bigger? I can imagine that processes run longer, and maybe you need more powerfull hardware?

Hi, I apologize if this has been requested in the past but I was not able to find this info: where is it possible to know which version of mkgmap - and maybe which command line params - are used to build the maps?

It would be nice to know this to be aware of which new functionality are available… in the past I tried the maps there but since the mkgmap version used was not that up to date I was missing the address search functionality so I switched to build maps myself using geofabick pbf, spltter and the latest mkgmap… and I’m still doing that! But I would swicth back to lambertus maps if I knew the way the map is build and find out it is matching my needs.

Many thanks!
gspeed

Hello gspeed,

The mkgmap version is in the licence file that you see in the list of downloadable files, as indicated by the description. The params have been discussed here: http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=13257&p=5

See http://osm.pleiades.uni-wuppertal.de/garmin/generic/07-04-2013/d0a4cfbbae3118e554bea4f668265ef6/63240000_license.txt
Map created with mkgmap-r2544 (which includes housenumber search)

perfect - thanks!

hey, I tried myself but: http://osm2.pleiades.uni-wuppertal.de/garmin/generic/07-04-2013/98f36cdf7e3fbffdb0dfe9893600cd2b/63240000_license.txt

the vesion is “Map created with mkgmap-r2309” - that’s pretty old, how did you get 2544?

The tiles are generated on osm.pleiades.uni-wuppertal.de and then copied to osm2. The Mkgamp on osm2 is only used to create the gmapsupp and -I think- not related to recent improvements in the search capabilities as those concern the indexes in separate tiles. But I could be mistaken ofcourse.

The commandline parameters have been posted at various places in this topic

Did you download a “custom” map (not one of the drop downlist)?
Then maybe Lambertus should have a look here and update his scripts to use the same mkgmap recent version.

I think it is better always use the same mkgmap version?

ok - so I agree with ligfietser, for custom maps the final behavior/features might not be aligned to the pre-created map and this can create confusion (@ligfietser yes, it was a custom map)

Regarding the command line, right - but it is quite time consuming to get the full picture and you mgith always miss a latest change, it would be nice if the current command lines will be documented somewhere in the wiki pages!

Nevertheless… thanks for all what you provide!

gspeed

Possibly, but it has almost always been the case that the Mkgmap version on osm2 is lagging behind. Differences should only have effects when it concerns gmapsupp creation. Anyway, I have a map from osm2 on my GPS and address search works fine.

Better update it because the license txt is old: :wink:
Map data licenced under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0

In the latest mkgmap version this is changed,
see http://www.mail-archive.com/mkgmap-dev@lists.mkgmap.org.uk/msg15446.html