[OSM-dev] Call to mobile developers: OSM binary file format

[Laurence Penney]

Graham Asher, developer of CartoType (presented at SOTM 2008) <www.cartotype.com 
 >, has asked me to forward this to the list.

===========
The format used by CartoType is publicly available under an open  
license. See http://www.cartotype.com/cartotype_map_data_format_type_1.html 
. The format can be used as-is, or as an inspiration for a new format  
specifically designed for OSM.

It already works well with OSM data and gives very good compression  
(recent UK data is about 1Gb in .osm format, 37Mb in CTM1 format).
===========

- L

On 7 Aug 2008, at 09:32, Chris Browet wrote:

> Dear mobile developers,
>
> We all have the same problem: the XML OSM format is not efficient  
> for mobile devices.
> For the time being, we all develop our own solution to transform the  
> XML in whatever binary format suitable for a mobile application,  
> often forcing the user to use a specific desktop application for the  
> transformation.
>
> I would like to know if some of you would be interested in  
> developing a common binary format, rather than each application  
> having its own, incompatible with the others.
>
> I know that there is a proposal at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/OSM_Mobile_Binary_Protocol 
> , but it's mostly server-based.
> For merkaartor, I created an osb format (in anticipation of a winCE  
> version) loosely based on the proposal, but I don't agree with  
> everything, so there are some discrepancies.
>
> If there is a critical mass of developers agreeing to work on this,  
> we can then organize the details.
>
> - Chris -
>
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