Extra_POI_Editor - A tool to View/Edit/Convert POI/TourGuides (Part 2)

Thank you turboccc!!! Can't wait to test the first beta. It's like Christmas all over again!!

Turbo, I found that according to a support statement for Visual Basic on Microsoft's website, Visual Basic 6 is included in a 64-bit install.

Any possibility of a Windows 7 64-bit compatible installer sometime in the future? I had a fair amount of trouble installing EPE on my new 64-bit laptop.

Hi Strephon_Alkhalikoi,

There is no VB6 on Win7. IN fact, it is not supported at all. Everything is now VB .NET which is different from VB6.

I am actually running EPE on my Win7 64-bit computer. Just use the latest installer as Admin. If there is any error during the installation, just type Ignore and all will work fine. Once the installation is complete, Just d/l the latest .exe and overwrite in the installation folder.

And yes, I should make a working install for Win 7 some day. Maybe is you report the files that needed to be ignored, I will remove them and make a perfect installation package.

Thanks,

Turbo

Is that what it is? That's what I get for doing research at 5am in the morning. LOL.

I think I know what my issue was though in installing. To correct the ieframe.dll error I had deleted its entry in setup.lst. This time around I used an unaltered copy of the 4.85 installer and it worked fine.

One thing I discovered though in my tinkering was that the bootstrap section of the installer isn't required at all in Windows 7, because those files are already included. Looking at the uninstaller log in the EPE home directory points this out, since for each file in the bootstrap section a mention is made that the file wasn't replaced because a newer version of the file already existed.

The other thing I discovered is that the only file that has to be copied to System32 is richtx32.ocx. EPE from the extracted cab worked perfectly when the ocx was put in System32, and no other files moved.

Still, I should have slept first before trying to install EPE or worse, tinker with it. I had spent the entire day setting up the computer just the way I like it and making a disk image. I didn't get finished until 3am today, after starting at noon New Year's Eve.

Turbo,

I have some categories showing on the editor screen. How do you delete those entries?

You can't! LOL! This is also on the ToDo list. It does not matter if those categories are there or not. It has no impact on EPE's operations.

If you really want to delete them, you can run "regedit" and delete the keys under the Categories key or simply delete the Categories key below

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\TurboCCC\Extra_POI_Editor\Categories

Turbo

Thanks.

That's worth a vote for next year.

Each of my computers has a USB drive attached that is used by a program called Instaback 2 from PCMag. Anyone can get this utility for $7.97. I set it to back up certain directories. SO, whenever I do a save of any file within those directories, instaback makes a copy to the USB drive. I usually choose to keep the last 10 versions.

I decided I needed something like that when I had worked all weekend on a complicated multi-page spreadsheet and managed to delete one of the critical pages.

As you know, some software will do automatic saves every x minutes (or whatever) if you choose to let it do so.

Yes, it would be a nice tool, but VB keeps the source code in memory. If it crashes, all is gone.

I coorected the setting to "Save before running" which will ensure an automatic save everytime I run the code. PErfect for me.

the auto save should be perfect for your application.

Can't say enough times how grateful we all are for your hard work.

As mentioned in previous posts, I am coming with EPE v5.00 which will have the ability to save as .gpi file (yes, the same as POI Loader). This opens lots of perpectives.

I am not done yet and this will probably take some time before it is a real replacement for POI Loader, but I have started a thread for beta development of this new version. You can find it here:

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/31703

Please, do not post on the thread above bugs not related to .gpi file creation with EPE v5.0 beta. It will just create noise on the thread. But feel free to have a look at what is going on there. If you have questions about the new features (.gpi file related), do not hesitate to post it in the other thread. For the rest, post them here and I`ll continue to monitor this thread anyways.

Thanks,

Turbo

Sorry I posted in the wrong topic. I meant to be in the poisync topic.

I don't see any posts since January 2011
and want to post a question or two.
Is this still the place to do that for EPE 4.x?

Yes it is. Post your question and Turbo will get back at ya

See the link in the first post for all EPE 4.xx questions. This thread should be reserved for EPE 5.xx question and .gpi file generation.

About this thread: yes, I have not posted anyhting lately. I am too tired to concentrate. I have been working part time on adding wav file alerts. I just need 2-3 hours to complete what I am doing. The tough part is to schedule some time to do it. It is coming though.

You may need to catch up with some zzz's. My understanding is that this thread is the current for 4.x questions and the thread titled Extra_POI_Editor v5.0 beta (.gpi file creation only in this thread) (http://www.poi-factory.com/node/31703) was for 5.xx.

But these are your threads...

You are right about the sleep... LOL! Yes, this is the right thread for all EPE v4.xx questions. Sorry about that! I thought I was in the v5.xx thread...

KenBushaw, I'm ready for your question...

About a year ago, I created a gpx file for Sprouts Farmers Market stores in the Phoenix area using the latest version of EPE at that time.

Everything seemed to work well until a couple weeks ago when we selected one of the stores we had never been to yet and were directed to a location that was on the correct road but a long ways away... like a mile or so.

I assume you use a web service or API to resolve addresses to coordinates. Does that service return any kind of "confidence" indicator like "I know that address" or "I am not sure about that address" or "I am really just guessing".

The reason I ask is because GPSs seem to be notorious about just making their best guess without warning you that they really don't know.
That is, they don't know the specific address range so just take you to the "nearest" thing they know.
Likewise, EPE.

It would be nice to have a certainty rating when geocoding new POIs in EPE. That way, I would be alerted to the need to try to find the actual location and move the pin to the correct location.

I installed the latest EPE, opened the gpx file, opened that POI for edit and clicked the Geocoding button and it located the address at its correct location so something changed since I originally created it. The physical address was not changed.
(I know it was probably the geocoder database.)

I did the same for all the POIs in that file and none of the newly-resolved coordinates were exactly what they were before although some changed very little.

This all leads me to a secondary question which has to do with batch geocoding that I will append separately.

As mentioned in my previous post, I had a year old gpx file for which I individually edited and re-geocoded the POIs finding all had changed at least some.

I would like to have had a function to re-geocode all the POIs. However, my reading of the help for batch geocoding indicates it only updates POIs whose coordinates are not yet set. That obviously would do me no good for this problem.

It seems like it should be relatively straight forward to provide an option to automatically batch re-geocode every POI in a gpx file that has a resolvable physical address whether or not coordinates are already specified for it.

I realize that would "undo/redo" all manually-placed POIs too but it sure would have been helpful in my case. Having been a VB programmer myself, I would probably also like to provide a listing of the changed POIs and maybe the old and new coordinates for review.

What I am requesting maybe something you already have in the EPE readme wishlist but I am not sure.

A long time ago I requested that EPE automatically track the input and output directories being used.

I see something in the EPE readme wish list about a default output directory but this is something different.

I maintain separate trees of CSV and GPX and OV2 POIs and often use EPE to convert CSV to each of those formats after downloading CSV files to its tree. And for other conversion combinations too.

So, it would be helpful if EPE always defaulted to the last-used directory for opening files and separately for last-used directory for saving files.
As it is, I always have to re-find my input and output directories for each converted file. And I have a lot of them.

1- Accuracy

Yes, EPE uses a geocoding service to get the coordinates. Like you said, the database was probably updated the same way as maps are updated. This explains the better accuracy. EPE will also drop any coordinates that are not at the street level. This is why it is at least on the right street. You know how this works, right? A street contains only the first and last address on the street. The geocoder will estimate an uniform speading of the addresses. If there are "holes" on the street, the spreading is not uniform and the geocoding will be wrong.

2- Full batch geocoding

If you want to geocode everything, the current solution is to blank all the lon/lat. The easiest way to bkank them is to use the Replace-Field function in the Edit menu. You can globally replace the Longitude field by nothing and do the same with the Latitude.

I had planned to do something similar to what you said and have a list of POI with original and modified coordinates with a distance between the 2 of them. I am not sure what it would achieve since it does not tell you which one is good or even if one of them is good. It would have been fun to see both markers on the map and try to find the real location using StreetView.

3- Default Input/Output Folders

I see your point. Right now, it always uses the last open/save folder. In the Prefdrences, you can only set the first folder to open when EPE starts.

I wonder if this will not cause problems. For example, I open a file in a folder. If I do a save (Ctrl-S), it should save in the input folder and overwrite the existing file. Even if I do a Save As, all the programs I have ever seen will try to use the last folder as the destination folder.

In your case, it looks like all CSV are in the same folder, all GPX in a different one, etc... This means that when you convert a bunch of files from one format to the other, you want to save them all at the right place. I wonder how EPE could handle this without breaking with the "usual" rules.

How about this: with EPE, you can merge open a bunch of files in the same folder. Let's say you open all your GPX files. Using the new "Export by Filename" in EPE v5.xx, I think it will save each of your files in the new folder by preserving the filename and adding the selected extension (CSV, GPX, OV2, ...). Please try this in an empty output folder first... )

Feedback is welcomed to make sure I understood your features correctly.

Thanks,

Turbo

Thanks for the tip for batch re-geocoding.

You are correct about most programs defaulting to saving back to the same folder the open file was opened from.

So, what I am requesting should not be the default mode of operation. It would have to be something that is switched on as needed.

You might guess I did not tell the whole story. As you know, Garmin will let you organize custom POIs in a folder hierarchy. I would not want all my custom POIs on the top-level page. It is too cumbersome to try to access them from one long list.

So, in reality, what I have on my hard drive is a top level folder named "Custom POIs." In it are folders named CSV_POISet, TOMTOM_POISet, and GARMIN_POISet. In each of these folders are folders named FOOD, SHOPPING, FUEL, FUN, LODGING, OTHER, ... Within each of those folders are the POI files and icons for that category. I also place an address book POI file and a rest stop POI file directly in each top-level XXX_POISet folder for immediate access.

So, I have 3 parallel trees and I convert files folder by folder from one tree to another. For example, I would be opening files in the FOOD folder of the CSV tree and saving them as gpx to the FOOD folder in the GARMIN tree.

That makes for a lot of re-opening folders each time I want to open or save the next file.

It doesn't seem to me your 5.xx solution would be adequate for this.

Since EPE does not show the full directory names, and the category folders have the same names in their parallel trees, I am sometimes unsure which tree I am in for opening and saving files.
Having the confidence that it was what I used last in each case would also be comforting.

Ken, Re. your comment about accuracy of the geocoding, Turboccc added a right-click selection on an individual POI to include a Google Earth call. I use that to verify every POI location as best I can. I can probably see 90%+ of my POIs in GE and go back to EPE, manually move the POI, then back with the right-click to GE and see how well the Street View matches the changed coordinates. Usually 1-2 iterations and I've got them accurate to my satisfaction. Yes, some need to be guessed, but it's better than doing the guessing in the field for all of them.

Another user marks his approximated ones by naming them "near [POI name}".

I also organize my POI using folders however, I use 2 sets of folders, one for my source files, those in Excel and place the file to be loaded into the folder POI Loader uses for input.

This is very helpful when creating both CSV and GPX files. The folder organization is the same, i.e. the folders and subfolders are in the same order and contain the same files.

I apparently did something EPE did not like after entering several POIs without yet doing a save and it crashed saying some required resource was already in use.

When I restarted, I did not get a prompt to recover any work. Surely you are, or need to be, saving a temp/working file after each item has been edited/ended with OK.

Am I missing something?

@KenBushaw,

Nothing gets saved until you do it yourself. Everything is kept in the computer memory. No temp file is used.

I just remembered this was in the ToDo list:

- Save editor to a temp file every 10-15 minutes. If EPE crashes, EPE will propose to open the recovery file. Otherwise, EPE deletes the backup file on exit.

I completely forgot about that one. I am sorry it was not there when you needed it. I have not reviewed the ToDo list in a long time.

About the crash: if you tried to save to an opened CSV file, this may explain the problem. It may not be exactly that one because I protected EPE against that, but it may be something alike. If you remember it, let me know and I'll fix it.

Update: I added an automatic backup save to EPE_temp_poi.gpx every 10 minutes in the EPE folder. It will also ask to reload those unsaved POI if there is an abnormal crash. This functionality will appear in EPE v5.11 when I post it.

I was not purposely trying to do anything but enter and update POI records. I think I fat-fingered some key combination that triggered the crash. I was not trying to save the file but that could be what I triggered.

I know a lot of editors save temp files on an elapsed-time basis and that can be very helpful when doing random kinds of editing.

You didn't comment on my idea of also automatically doing a temp-file save every time you complete processing on the POI edit window (OK & Delete --- not cancel).
Does that sound like a bad idea to you?

The reason I think it makes a lot of sense is that those actions always represent a complete incremental addition or change.
Kinda like a database transaction.
Elapsed time has nothing to do with it.

Elapsed time is more useful for random editing tasks.
That function probably would probably not have helped me since I probably had less than 15 minutes of work done since opening the file.

You always prompt on closing a file if changes have not been saved, right?

Without the automatic temp-file update on each POI add or change, I find I need to save after every one of them and then I have to also dismiss the "xxx POIs saved" message that produces.

Who owns the map database service EPE uses to geocode addresses?

Is there a way to report errors and omissions to someone who might care?

Are there any options for specifying POI locations that is address based instead of, or in addition to, coordinate based?

I have found myself sometimes having to take the address information I have in a custom POI and manually enter it into a "Where To?" session to see where the GPS thinks it is.

Address based POI's are notoriously inaccurate simply because of the way geocoding works. Heck, this site exists because the built in geocoded POI's in most gps devices are so bad.

Read up on geocoding and you'll understand why address based POI's are such a bad idea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocoding

Thanks for the wiki pointer.
I wonder if you fully understood my point though.

Based on my experience using custom POI files (even from POI-Factory), I must assume many of their creators DO NOT take the time to verify correct coordinates for the POIs. Rather, I believe many just blindly accept the coordinates returned by whatever facility they used to geocode the physical addresses they found for the POIs. That's what happened to me recently with a POI file I created with EPE.

I can think of no other reason why I sometimes wind up at the totally wrong location.

However, often the textual address and other information, when provided, is correct. And, when input that to the GPSs "Where TO?" function, often results in finding the correct location of the POI or something that is closer to correct. Or maybe I find out the GPS never heard of that physical address which can be even more helpful.

As the GPS map databases get updated quarterly, I stand a good chance of finding the correct location for a POI that may have been geocoded a year or more ago.

I guess what I think I would like to have on the GPS page is a button that says "Go to Address" as well as the "GO" button that's there for a POI.
That should be easy to do for fully-specified GPX-based POI files.
That way I could easily check the current database's opinion about where it is located without having to memorize or copy down the physical address and re-enter it.

I often find myself double- or triple-checking POI information using different maps or online sources when I bring up a POI whose location looks suspect to me.

BTW: I inquired about POI-Factory guidelines for creating good POI files over a year ago and was shocked to learn there are none!

It's almost anything goes from what I can tell.
It varies all the way from almost junk to excellent.

The gps doesn't use "textual addresses". The gps uses lat/long coordinates. When you type an address into your gps and press GO the gps uses its internal geocoder to decide where that address might be on the map.

Maybe someone else will be able to explain it to you.

I think you are way way misunderstanding me.
I KNOW how it works.

What I am saying is that custom POI files already have the coordinates specified so they are not being resolved by the latest GPS map database when you select one and hit GO.

I would like to have an easy way to do that.
In GPX POI files, you can and should have the address fields set to exactly what was passed to the original geocoding service for that POI's frozen coordinates.

That textual address information may very well resolve to a much more correct location when fed to the GPS's own geocoder due to different map vendor and or accuracy/currency of its map database.

So, I want to be able to easily see where the GPS's geocoder thinks the POI is. I already do it manually when I need to but it's a pain.

I guess my net is that Garmin is not making good use of most of the information in GPX files. They are mostly just displaying it.

The decision tree for a unit is binary. It either has coordinates or an address. It will follow one path or the other and it does not have the processing power to do a comparison between what it resolves and what was previously resolved. In either event, if there was a difference, what correction factor would be applied? Would the unit use the location it resolved, the coordinates provided or would it determine the difference between the points and use those? The unit has to assume the person providing the coordinates knew where they resolve to and that is the exact point they wish to return to.

I am not disagreeing with what you say. I was hoping to learn that my GPS had the smarts to let me choose to use/resolve the POIs textual address versus blindly using the POI's pre-determined coordinates.

Here's an example of what I mean. It's a very simple problem and is what I alluded to in a recent post (just a few back).

About a year ago, I used EPE to create a GPX POI file from scratch with coordinates it geocoded from the physical address I had entered. I did not try to verify the coordinates were accurate for any of the POIs. After all, I didn't know exactly where the addresses were located. I just trusted the EPE geocoding. So that's where your assumption above goes wrong first. And, like I said before, I can only assume other POI creators are doing the same thing a lot because of the results I sometimes get.

Just recently, I used one of the POIs whose geocoding was way off (like a mile or south of the correct location) so the GPS said I had arrived but no stores were in sight.

Since I had entered the POI's physical address and phone number and descriptive information, that was all displayed to me when viewing that POI in the GPS.

So, I said to myself, maybe the latest GPS map database knows where that address is (that's not what EPE uses or used to get the pre-determined coordinates anyway). So I memorized the address displayed for the POI and used the GPS's "Where To?" function to find that address. Sure enough, the GPS's map knew exactly where it was and took me there. In other words, I was able to get a second, possibly more up to date, opinion of where that address was.

So, it would be nice if the GPS had a built-in function to "Where To?" the POI using the address information without me having to manually enter all of it. It knows it has an address, so let me use it! Sort of like the GPS will dial a phone number if it knows that's what it has.

I think I get what you are saying..
..and your 'use the poi address' with the built-in map idea would be a great feature. You should suggest it to Garmin and/or the others!

What you're really saying is that your gps unit's map and it's 'address-to-coordinates' differ from the ones that were used in building your custom poi file.

At the end of the day since we use the unit to find the 'real' location, the only way to guarantee that you'll be building either addresses or coordinates to match your unit is to use the same map and version as is on the unit when you build or edit the pois.

With a Garmin, that means you need to use either the MapSource or BaseCamp software. But, you'll soon find that they have limited productivity when creating and/or editing large sets of pois. They also don't have satellite image overlays (although Garmin has a 'Bird's Eye' scheme that they are building).

And even though point X on earth should be the same on every map (or address!) system, by the time your unit gets it's signals about where you actually are and then plots it on it's map, it may still not match up exactly with anything else, or every time.

Say what they may about building a poi file where every coordinate has been visited & hand-verified, it would be accurate to the doorbell but not very comprehensive.

The best I hope for is that the creator of the poi at least made an effort to verify the coords with somebody's satellite map/image system.. then I'll probably be close enough to find it 'old school' if not spot-on with my gps unit.

(EPE uses Google maps, so you can submit errors there, by the way)

Thanks for letting me know EPE uses Google maps. I had asked in an earlier post but heard nothing.

I have reported the errors I was concerned about.

I also submitted a request to Garmin for the feature we have been discussing. I am, of course, NOT holding my breath

I just tried using EPE to edit/delete my "My Favorites" on my Nuvi 1450 for the first time a couple days ago.

In other words, I had it get them, I updated them, and then I saved them back to the GPS as well as to a local file.

When I access My Favorites now, I see I have some duplicate entries. Some of the names have a number 1 appended to them or have a modified form of the original name I think.

Silly me, I thought I was going to be able to use EPE to maintain My Favorites and keep backup copies.

There were/are only 3 items in the file I saved locally but I have six items in the GPS's My Favorites. One of them is the original coordinate-based HOME location the GPS automatically added when it was first powered up. (The GPS is only a few days old.) This is a location I deleted using EPE before I saved the set back.

So, I see EPE Help says it doesn't change Current.gpx but saves back an EPE.gpx to also be loaded by the GPS. So, that's why I have duplicates.

The Help says I should be sure to make a copy of Current.gpx but then goes on to say EPE leaves everything in it intact. If you are leaving everything in Current.gpx intact, why should I need to make a copy of it? Do you sometimes destroy it just by attempting to read it?

Sorry for the late answer. I have been out of town for a few days.

1- Incremental saving is not possible with EPE especially when multiple files are open using Merge Open. The only thing I can do is a time-delayed save to a temporary file.

2- EPE uses maps.google.com for geocoding.

3- I thought everybody knew about the Favorites problem. It is not an EPE issue, but a Garmin one. The GPS will duplicate any POI he thinks are not the same as the original one. For example, you may change the Phone number and it will not duplicate the POI, but if you change the coordinates or the POI name, then it will duplicate it. I do not know the exact rules, but it is something like that.

Turbo

Am I correct that you have to go with a side file because Garmin will not let you change Current.gpx?

Or do you figure it is just too dangerous or frought with problems?

Open EPE. Go to File/ Open favourites. Then Save As a .gpx. Tranfer to the unit with the Current.gpx file. Reboot, and Voila! All the new faves are listed.

I also save them to my POI folder, so they are transferred to my custom POI's just in case...

I don't understand the first part since it sounds like what I did that produced all the duplicates... unless you are talking about reading from one GPS and saving to a different one.

All GPSs have a Current.gpx file managed by the GPS. So, when I used EPE to get the favorites in it, changed and deleted some, and saved it back to the GPS, EPE saved a file named EPE.gpx alongside the original Current.gpx which still had some of the same entries as the one EPE saved for me.

Therefore, I got duplicates which the GPS renamed to make them unique.

Please clarify.

It sounds like we do the same things to recreate the faves file. Except, when I put it in with the current.gpx, I don't get duplicates, it just updates it. I even leave it in the folder until I overwrite it the next time.

It would be nice if Garmin standardized the way they did things.

I see that BoxCar and JD4x4 had this discussion back on 10/12/2011 but I never read a resolution. I did not read anywhere that TurboCCC had seen this bug yet, or my eyes are tired again and I went right past it. So I am bringing it up again for TurboCCC to see.

I too know the work around is to "Replace All / Proximity" with the metric value of what you need for your distance. The value you enter is what will be saved as meters in the gpx file regardless of the Preferences settings.

It will be approximately 3.38 times your value when you reopen the file the next time, again, regardless of your Preference settings, because it knows it is importing meters but converts it to feet.

You just have to remember to do the Replace All as your last step before running POI Loader or you end up with a very large alert distace by surprise.

The problem is if a file has different alert distances for different entries in the file. Then it becomes difficult to adjust and maintain.

FYI ... I am running Win 7 with the v4.70 download installed 1st, then v4.88 copied over it.

If reading your post correctly.You say you are making changes to the gpx file them sending them back.What is happening is the EPE.gpx file is getting loaded back to the current.gpx with the old ones.Once you re-boot the gps.Hopefully you saved the orginial current.gpx on your computer.If yes delete the EPE.gpx from the unit and any others you see with the current gpx extension in that folder.Manually delete the favorites from the gps and re-boot gps.Load the current.gpx to EPE you saved on your computer.Make changes and send back to gps.

So, I just assumed the GPS was reading and displaying the content of the separate EPE.gpx and Current.gpx files. It sounds like you are saying that, at bootup, the GPS reads the EPE.gpx and merges it into Current.gpx.
Is that correct?

I asked earlier why it was important to save Current.gpx if EPE was not modifying it in any way but never got an answer. Perhaps now I know?

Does Garmin have any comprehensive documentation about how this stuff works (or should work) or is it all just trial and error?
The latter would be the Garmin way, I guess.

If you are making changes to the original current.gpx.It will load back.For example a lot of us.Use Google maps to send a favorite directly to our gps.When you do that you will see in the GPX folder another file with the gpx extension next to the current.gpx.Once you boot up the gps it loads to the current.gpx.The other file stays there until you remove it.If you were to delete that favorite manually from the gps.Once you boot back up that same favorite would show up on the gps.It would reload from the file that is still in the GPX folder from Google maps.You would have to delete that file from the Garmin drive then manually delete from the gps.To me that is what is happening when you make changes to the current.gpx and save as EPE.gpx.It is loading new pois.

Ken - the current.gpx file is actually a copy of your favorites. There are numerous threads discussing how the current.gpx file works. Here's one http://www.poi-factory.com/node/31915

Thanks and thanks, charlesd45.