POI gpx help

I've been researching this same question, and the answer appears to be no, at least not with POI Loader.

The Travel Guide files use some tags and flags in their GPI files that are not available via POI Loader, or if they are I don't know how you would trigger them.

It looks to me like Garmin has attempted to keep the "Travel Guide" features separate from the POI Loader features. In practice, the features overlap quite a bit.

The best I've been able to do with POI Loader is to put about 6 newlines at the beginning of the address field, forcing it off the main page. Then on "page 1" you get nothing (except a phone number if you have a Bluetooth phone connected), but the "More" button will appear. On page 2, you'll get all your information, and the newlines will be ignored.

The layout engine for page 1 and page 2 on a Nuvi 6xx (and I think the 2xx and 7xx) are different. The main page has a single font style and responds to newlines. The second page uses an XML/HTML style of formatting, so newlines get treated as whitespace. To add a line break, you use <br>. Boldface is <b> and </b>. In your GPX file, you need to escape the < and > characters by using &gt; and &lt;

Keep in mind that if this text ends up on page 1, it will just show up as normal text, because page 1 doesn't use the HTML-like formatting.

For example:

To get the following:

Hours
12:30-6:00

You would use:

&lt;b&gt;Hours&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br&gt;12:30-6:00

This is the XML-escaped version of:

<b>Hours</b><br>12:30-6:00

That's perfectly obvious, right?

I'd like to note that this forum also requires escaping, so for the stuff above I had to double-escape everything. Fun!

I've been corresponding with Phil Hornby about this, and we've been brainstorming ways to trick POI Loader into fixing this problem. There may be hope yet, but I certainly am not promising anything.

Don

Thanks for shedding some light on this. I am glad that I am not the only one frustrated with this seemingly simple task.

Having very little background in xml, I have been forced to do a lot of experimenting with the basic structure of the gpx file to try to get everything to work properly. I have been blindly trying different things to see what works and what doesn't.

Though I cannot offer much in the way of technical expertise, I am going to continue to work on this issue also.

Please post any progress that you may have, and I appreciate your time.

This has been noted before by 6xx users - would you add your voice, by reporting this to Garmin - as it's clearly a firmware bug. See if you can get a sensible response out of them...

... otherwise, some sort of post-processor might be the order of the day. Using information from Don, we already have a technique that can b used to get rid of the (necessary, but evil!) ". . . . . . " sequence that GeePeeEx Editor is forced to use with the 6xx. A prototype is working - but hasn't evolved into production quality code yet...

I will be contacting Gramin tonight to see if I can elicit some kind of a response.

That has got to be frustrating knowing you have written really good gpx software only to be crippled by a bug that is out of your control.

Thank you guys for all of the great information. I am no longer as frustrated as what I was before I joined this forum. I am going to try to get some answers from Garmin, and I will keep you guys posted.

Thanks aagain.

I contacted Garmin via phone and explained to them the issue I was having with the gpx files. The software tech I talked to asked me to send him one of my sample gpx files that was having the issue.

After checking my file, this is what what they responded with:

"I was looking into this and it is a limitation of the Poi Loader. That's
the way the software is designed. I have taken your suggestion to the
engineers so possible future changes in the software may address this.

Thank you for Contacting Garmin."

Maybe the ball is rolling to get some new POI Loader software in the works. I emailed Garmin back and inquired about a temparoary work-around until the new software is written and released.

Wouldn't you love to know how he's arrived at that conclusion...

... anyway, looking on the bright side, it's acknowledged as a problem; that may one day get fixed...