[Talk-us] some thoughts on things to do

[Richard Welty]

i've used most of the garmin images Dave Hansen has made available since
last fall; first, thanks to Dave, Lambertus, and the mkgmap team for the
work so far. i've seen the improvement over the past several months, and am
more than a little energized by what is showing up.

what follows are some things i think become priorities once you've seen
where the garmin version of the OSM maps are and where they're going.
there might even be a project of the week here.

the first two have to do with routing:

1) setting highway classifications and maxspeed properly

     i'm not sure maxspeed is currently being handled, but values should
     probably be set in anticipation of being needed. those primaries and
     secondaries running through downtown with lots of stoplights are
     rarely the fast route when there's a nearby motorway, it'd be good if
     the routing had enough information to figure that out.

2) connectivity at administrative borders

     i have found a number of situations along the NY/PA border where
     state routes weren't connected up. a project i will be doing shortly
     is working the entire length of the NY/PA border looking for
     disconnects. this is probably needed elsewhere. a project of the week,
     perhaps?

and the third is...

3) POIs

     the POIs are showing up nicely in the garmin POI displays ... where
     they are in the map at all. fuel stations, convenience stores, 
restaurants,
     hotels/motels, post offices, all this stuff is worth putting in, 
all of it.
     and if you put in the address information, it shows up in the Garmin
     POI display too.

     what i don't know is if mkgmap handles POIs entered as polygons
     instead of points. i've entered a couple of POIs as building polygons
     and am looking forward to finding out.

richard