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

[Jan Peter Stotz]

Chris Browet wrote:
> 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.

May be WAP WAP Binary XML (WBXML) encoding [1] would be a possible 
solution? It significantly reduces the size of data to be transfered 
while keeping the compatibility to the current data format. The 
transportation could be still HTTP or a different binary protocol with a 
higher efficiency.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/wbxml/

Jan