Hacking The .gpi File...

If you mean the garmin official POI in the unit/mapset I don't know that it's accessible by normal means (and might be legally dicey).

If you mean the custom .gpi then you likely already have the source (unless someone gave you a card preloaded, etc).

You could crank up a hex editor and eyeball it, strings it, etc. At first glance it doesn't look terribly complicated, but I don't have any real incentive to dissemble it and document the internal structure.

I would love to hack the original POI file.
for some reason on my c530, you have to go through an
extra menu screen to get to your own POI file.

Tha way I could eliminate going through that extra useless screen.

for instance, you click something like "other"
then a screen comes up that only has one option
"user POI" or somesuch..
then you click that to go to your custom POI.
Well if there is only one option, why do ou have to
go hrough that screen? it's useless.

Also you could cut out POI that you know you will never use, like maybe certain types of resteraunts. (for foods you will never eat) and technically you would save data space, as well as weed out one less useless menu item to scroll past)

also, this would let you put in POI you want to look up
like stores.. and weed out other POI files like speed cameras, and you could leave speed cameras in your custom POI files, so they don't get in the way while
you scroll through the dfaualt system pio.

So this is a very good idea! let's get cracking!

how do we hack this file for a garmin..thanks..

You cannot change the points that came with your unit. Those are built into the unit and the only thing that will change them is an update from Garmin. The points that come with the unit are not supplied in a .gpi file like the files that POI Loader makes.

If you have uploaded your own points using POI Loader then you can, of course, change those. The latest version of POI Loader includes a way to delete all the points you've uploaded so you can just start again with the points you now think are correct.

If you have a .gpi file which was prepared with POI Loader it is possible to extract the coordinates and some other point information from it and compile that back into a .csv file. I have a program (it runs only on a Macintosh) which does that which I use for testing my Macintosh version of POI Loader. This program cannot extract the information for POIs that were supplied with the unit, or POIs which are included in Garmin's Travel Guides or Speed Camera information files. All of those files are encrypted and I'm not interested in breaking the encryption.