POI Syntax

a few months ago there were many postings about POI standards, many posters agreed with the items that you listed. If I remember correctly, Miss POI put the discussion on hold pending more pressing issues on this board. But I'm sure that she'll bring the topic up soon.

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/18592

This is the thread if you are interested.
Chuck

we are in the process of a system upgrade, it is taking all of our time and attention right now.

Miss POI

This sounds dangerously close to the discussion of actually trying to give people good guidelines on what should be in a POI file, which has been declared off limits and the thread closed. Such things mush not be discussed, apparently.

On a related note, on a recent visit to Pittsburgh I wanted to find some place handy to eat and opened my POIs in my nuvi. I had all of my restaurant POIs loaded in a restaurant category, so I opened it and looked to see what POIs I had loader that were close. To my surprise some restaurants just showed as a street address or even a community such as "Avalon". Even looking at the POI and trying to find more information that might have been in column 4 did not give any information to actually identify what resturant I was looking at a POI for!

I did track down the POI at at least some of these POIs were in, (only by going through each individual POI file one by one) and contacted the author and explained the issue. He was nice enough to add the restaurant name to field 3 so that this would not happen in the future. But I'm sure that this happened because he had no guidelines on what should be in each field (or came across the guideline of "just throw whatever you want in the fields, it would be oppression if we made suggestions". And I'm rather certain that there are still other POI files out there that will cause others similar frustration, and new ones that will be created in the future by well meaning people who can not be given guidelines.

I mean no disrespect, but please, NOT another "POI standards" topic. The last one is still burned in my brain.

So to your standards do phone number area codes get a ( at the begining or not?

Will my Nuvi understand that "Tél: (450) 655-6950" is a phone number that my bluetooh can dial?

It always seems funny to me how people think that they should be able to complain about free labor done by others. Yes tel with an accent over the e is MUCH better than Phone.(said facetiously). If you don't like the way somebody builds their file - change it.
But telling everybody that your way is the only way is bull****

It's not about complaining about how people who make free POIs do something, it's about trying to help organize standards. I made a couple of free POIs myself, but found any standards very much lacking and wanted them (what format to put a telephone number in, for example). Or see my above post for another example of what happens when there are no simple standards.

I think the Gestapo label belongs on the other side, those who want to dictate that no one be allowed to even discuss guidelines. Or those who bitch and complain about such discussion, when they could just choose not to read the thread. Of course, that's just my opinion, and clearly your opinion is much better than mine.

No, the phone number is usually witten at the end of the address statement. While copying the POI line into this comment box, it appears on a different line. Sorry
Remember this, The first information red by your GPS is the long -lat. This determines where the POI will be placed on your GPS map)
Second, What is between the first set of Inverted commas "xxx" is the title you see in your list for a particular POI file. If You select it in the list, You should hear this phrase only, if your GPS uses TTS voice.
Third, What is written in between the other set of Inverted commas are the details You will find when a paricular location is selected. Pertinent infos concerning this particular location will be red, but not spoken.
Here is an example:
First field: -66.369140,50.207568,
Second field: "Sept-Iles Toyota",
Third field: "225 Boul. Laure, Sept-Iles Qc. (418) 962-5531"

If You open a .csv file using Notepad or Excel, you should see the three field on the same line. Except for the LONG LAT, each statement must be in between Inverted commas (" ") and separeted by a comma (,)
Concerning you Nuvi 760, I don't have the answer, using a different model. Probably someone else can answer You.
Hope this help

Lat and lon are actually 2 fields and in the Garmin POI file, the longitude always goes first so it's long/lat.

Thought this was a bit funny... as I had never heard the term "Inverted commas" before.

I've always seen these referred to in code, documentation etc... as "Double quotes" as opposed to 'Single quotes'.

Reminds me of another term that I heard the other day that I'd never heard of... "Sleeping Policeman"

I think using the term "standard format" rankles some of people as imposing too much control. Since the POI files are created by volunteers, I think it would be inappropriate to be overly critical of the effort of a contributor to tell the individual their submission was being rejected because they did not follow the standard format.

Rather than imposing a hard and fast rule, I am hopeful that what okazou is promoting is more consistency in how POI files are created - which is actually a good thing! The FAQ files provide really good information on POI format but in a much less ominous tone. Wish I had read them before I posted a couple of screwed-up files!

Just substituting the words "POI Guide" for "POI Standard" makes it a whole lot easier. I'm sure that many people creating POI files would like to see a guide as to what to put in the file, the order, and the syntax. The site does not need to restrict posting and sharing of POIs that don't meat this guideline, however a seal of approval could be given for those who do. I believe something like this has been proposed before.