Sam, you seem to be "in the loop" with MkGMap. Can you tell me when/if they will ever fix the problem for Japan where place names are all transliterated into Latin characters with CHINESE readings. While many of the characters are the same, the readings are completely different. For example, what should be "Keihin-Kyuko" becomes "Jingbangjixingxian" (or something like that). I pointed it out years ago, but nobody seemed to be interested in fixing it...

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Japan touring information

Howdy all,

Big ask but would anyone in London, or southern Germany have a whole bunch of maps already to go on to an SD card and thus into my Garmin. I tried and tried to do as colebatch instructed, i have OSM, i have Mapsource, I have Basecamp...... i dont have much time left! im flying to Europe (from Sydney) in 10 hours and i have an emply Garmin.

Im heading to Rome via Stuttgart, maybe Munich, if anyone in that area could even just show me what i'm doing wrong it would be awesome..

Thank you

Tom

If you are really desperate then see my earlier post, number 52, for an alternative approach that has worked OK for me - it delivers a single country map "in real time" i.e. with no delay while waiting for an email confirmation.

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Dave

Hi Chris...

It's not really a thread I've been following, but I did find this on the MkGMap wiki and it does seem to parallel my vague recollection of the discussion regarding Cyrillic characters that I was following for a while.

When MkGMap is executed, you may specify numerous options within the command line. One of those options specifies which code page (character set) the program should use when generating the img file. From what I see, code page 932 (Japanese characters) is now supported. It also appears, however, that the Garmin device must have the font installed. The wiki above does have a good link and intructions as to how to install the fonts on an older Nuvi. I'd check out the Garmin site to see if your model supports the character set natively or just what you have to do to get the Japanese character set to display.

The rub is to have an img file created using the --code-page=932 option set. I'd guess that most of the pre-made ones (like those on Lambertus' excellent site) are set to the default Latin. Although, it might just be worth a quick note to him to see if he would be willing to offer the option for Japan...

It is possible to generate your own img file using OSM data and MkGMap with whatever options you want, but it is not a quick and easy job or for those who are hardware-challenged. The data set for the entire planet now runs about 20G, although sub-sets are available. And it does take a machine with lots of memory. I've done it successfully for maps of BC, (but just barely) using a Linux machine (the way to go for this) with only 4G of memory. It took a few hours to generate the img file. Downloading from Lambertus is so much easier!

Anyway, I'm no real expert on this. Just an interested bystander. I think I'd take the easy route first by contacting Lambertus and asking about him offering the option of Japan with a 932 codepage and if that doesn't work, maybe ask the MkGMap folks if there are any problems to watch out for when generating your own. Then, if all is OK... maybe give that a try.

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

Thanks for the feedback Sam.
I will try to see if Lambertus would be willing to tweak his software to do something about Japan. Most of Garmin's devices not specifically for the Japanese market don't seem to handle the language by default, and travelers naturally don't want to mess with the firmware on the road. I don't use a Garmin myself, but it would be great for visitors to Japan to have something useful. Even something that just removes the non-Latin characters would be better than Chinese reading of Japanese words clogging up the screen. This is especially true as much of the info in OSM for Japan is bilingual.


Garmin is quite behind the times in language support it seems. My iPhone handles input as well as display of dozens of languages....

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Japan touring information

Hope you don't mind if I resurrect this thread for some advice that I feel I've already had 27 times in 54 different forms but to no avail..

At this stage I just want to view maps on a laptop.

I have MapSource installed on the computer - in a directory called Mapsource - naturally.

Clicking on Map Source application opens a map screen ready to go.

Then if I go to Free worldwide Garmin maps from OpenStreetMap and request a map - say of iceland and download it immediately, I get a choice of

[DIR] Parent Directory -
[TXT] tiles.txt
[ ] osm_generic_windows.exe 20-Apr-2013 14:56 15M Map
[ ] osm_generic_tiles.zip 20-Apr-2013 14:56 14M
[ ] osm_generic_macosx.zip 20-Apr-2013 14:56 14M
[ ] osm_generic_gmapsupp.zip 20-Apr-2013 14:56 14M
[TXT] country.txt 20-Apr-2013 14:56 19
[TXT] 63240000_license.txt 20-Apr-2013 14:56 379
[ ] 63240000.nsi

Now I understand that if I had a Garmin I could just drag [ ] osm_generic_gmapsupp.zip onto a sd card - maybe into a folder called Garmin and I would be away.

However as I want to run this on my laptop for now, I believe I have to download osm_generic_windows.exe

But - BUT - this is where I come unstuck.

What on earth do I do with this - meaning where do I install it. Do I install it in the Map Source Folder, in its own folder or where. I know it installs several files, mostly image files but ????

Then, how do I open the map on mapsource.

BTW - I know I can only open one such map at a time, but iceland iss the next trip so it will do for a test. Later I will swap to bottom half of S America which is what I really need.

Phil has made his files available for download but not having any luck with those either.

I've just has a quick play myself Tony.

I closed Basecamp to start off with.

I downloaded the OSM Windows file like you, ran it and during the install it already had "C:\Garmin\Maps\OSM generic routable" as the destination.

I then opened up Basecamp and along the top toolbar where all the icons are, there's a text dropdown box, I clicked this and there's an "OSM generic routable" option. This was the map I had just downloaded and it displayed fine.

Hope that helps. Dan