[mkgmap-dev] [PATCH v7] - alpha patch to support road find by name

Wed Mar 18 21:22:27 GMT 2009

Hi Marko,

> I just returned from a 60 km bike journey.  The routing worked great.
> When I refused to enter a track that was covered by soft snow, the
> Edge either computed a new route or allowed me to continue on a parallel
> road while displaying the "correct" route on the map.

I went out on my bike late afternoon. Lovely here, sunny, 12C and no
wind (or snow!) I quite often use the routing to test it and it always
seems to cope if I decide to use a different route - it just
recalculates after a while.

> > When I tested the feature, the zip info was displayed along with the
> > city name when matching roads are shown. It could possibly also be
> > displayed if you select a road on the map (not tested, just guessing).
> 
> OK, I'll look into this.  The zip info would be a very useful addition.

On the etrex, I think the zip info is only shown with the results of an
address search.

> > > When I search for "14", the list will only show "14", not "140".  Searching
> > > for "140" returns the road with ref=140.
> > 
> > You've lost me here - are you searching for an exit called 14?
> 
> In Finland, the motorways starting from Helsinki are numbered 1 through 7.
> The secondary roads parallel to the motorways are numbered 110, 120, 130,
> ..., 170.  There is a road with ref=14 up north (not a motorway, AFAIK).
> In the search dialog for street names, the search is incremental for
> names, e.g., if I type "A", I see street names starting with "A".  Same
> thing if I search for "1".  Alas, if I type "14", the list will reduce to
> just "14".  If I type "140", the road with ref=140 will show up again.

Thanks for spelling that out, I understand now. Hmmm, doesn't sound
good. Not sure what's the problem there.

> > > When it comes to joining roads, it would be good not to join long roads
> > > (several hundred kilometers), such as the 140.  Now the list of matches
> > > will display useful information: which section of the ref=140 I want to
> > > go to.  You could implement it so that road sections are joined when both
> > > sections are in the same "city".
> > 
> > Good point - actually, I haven't got my head around the joining of
> > roads to minimise the number of hits. It's not as simple to implement
> > as you may imagine.
> 
> I have programmed long enough to know that simple-sounding features are
> not necessarily easy to implement.

Due to time constraints (I do have to work as well!) I haven't had a
real good think about this. I'm quite busy now so perhaps someone else
will take up the challenge.

To be honest, I'm fed up because I have put a lot of hours into the
exit stuff and some more into this road addressing stuff and both
features have annoying usability faults. So close...

Cheers,

Mark