I've been a pretty steady mapper and contributor to OSM for the past 3 or 4 years and have been lurking for almost as long on the developer's mailing list for MkGMap - the program that is used to convert OSM data to the img file used on Garmin GPS's. It's clear that the MkGMap project has an extremely active and impresssive group of developers who must never sleep! This is definitely not a dead project! I've never contributed on that side of the project as my programming skills are not up to it and admittedly much of the discussion is way over my head, but it's an interesting list to follow.

It's clear that address searchability has been a major topic of discussion and the focus of considerable work. From what I have been reading in my mailbox over the past year or so, it seems that the nut has been cracked. My understanding is that the issue seems now to be in the limitations of the OSM data.

Although there are tools in the JOSM mapping software for adding specific adresses to locations or for specifying a range of addresses along a road, mappers rarely use them... mostly because the values just aren't known to them. So if it is not in the OSM data, it's not going to show up on the GPS. Since data tags such as country, state, and city are generally not added to each point, MkGMap does try to fill in those data by comparing the location of each POI, line and polygon to a pre-compiled file of all the world's administrative boundaries. Unfortunately, that boundary information is often incomplete and/or inconsistently applied from one country to another. When all else fails, MkGMap does make a stab at assigning the object to the closest administrative center as best it can. For example, if a road lies outside a city boundary, but close to a small, mapped town, it would probably be found by specifying not the city in the search, but the town.

I've used the OSM-derived maps for a few years all over Europe, NA and now Australia. I think the search feature is definitely getting better... or I'm getting better at using it. I find that the trick when searching for streets or roads is to not get too hung up on what city they're in... If the street is clearly in a big city, then fine. If it's outside a little or you're not exactly sure where it is, just don't specify a city in the search at all. Skip entering the city and use "Search All". Also, the OSM standard is to spell out the whole name in the data. So, look for North River Road, not N River Rd.

Anyway, it's a great project. Best way to give back is to get involved and map your own area.

Sam Longiaru
Kamloops, BC
Now bikeless in Australia

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Samuel Longiaru
Kamloops, BC Canada
1975 BMW R60/6
http://thetwilightproject.net