CSV Verses GPX

 

What is the Main Difference between CSV and GPX Formats for POI? I noticed that I have both Files Downloaded in my Customized POI Folder and I would like to know why two (2) different Formats, thanx, Don..

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Don Duke aka Joe Casino

CSV vs GPX, part 3.

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/37093
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/21274

The main difference between the two is in how much data the maintainer wishes to put in his POI file. The amount of data desired is going to directly influence the format you use. But...take a look at the links I provided.

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"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." --Douglas Adams

Thanks for the info. I have

Thanks for the info. I have wondered that myself

.GPX is much slower to import into Streets & Trips

.GPX files are many times slower to import into Streets & Trips than the same POI dataset in .CSV file format.

This seems odd to me, since S&T has a specific .GPX import function, compared to the more general purpose Data Wizard used for other file formats, including .CSV.

But I've noticed this consistently. Larger POI files (e.g.:; WalMart) in .GPX format can take several minutes to import into S&T.

Also, when importing a .GPX file into S&T, the street address is combined into the name field, making it more difficult to read in a specific POI's info flag. With the .CSV file, you have the ability to assign the address to the "Address" field, which causes it to show up under the name, in a format more like an address label.

CSV and GPX

CSV is a very simple data format. It basically supports four columns of data, and two of those are used for latitude and longitude. The others can be anything, but the third is usually the name and the forth is a catch all that people just throw everything else in, unfortunately often very unorderly and often even inconsistently. It is easy to make and easy to edit.

GPX is a much more structured form of data written in an XML format. The data tends to be well organized (although that says nothing about the accuracy). Each field is labeled, so it should be more straight forward to see what the data actually is. The file is much larger, with each entry typically taking many lines rather than a single line in a CSV file.

Both of these files are actually just text files, so you can open and examine them in any text editor (such as Wordpad). Looking at them will give you a much better understanding than I can convey here.

Because data is just dumped into CSV files but neatly organized in GPX files, some features require GPX files for full utility. For example, if your Garmin GPS has a Bluetooth option and you want to use it to call the phone number of a POI from the GPS, that POI file must be in GPX format, it will not find the phone number if just thrown in with everything else into field 4 of a CSV file.