Suggestion of Berthold Pasch (DE) for Handling Pois on the Garmin Devices

Suggestion of Berthold Pasch (DE) for handling POIs on the Garmin devices:

1. In POI-loader do not choose to send the POIs to the Garmin device but
store them on disk.
You will be able to specify a name for the POI-file, e.g. you might
specify:
"Camping-NL_POI.gpi"
2. Copy this file to the POI-folder on your Garmin device.
With this method you will never have a conflict with names. You can
store as many different POI-files as you wish.
I prefer to have the camping waypoint as Favorites rather than as POIs.
The difference on certain Garmin devices (nüvi-series) is:
- POIs appear on the map only at a certain zoom factor (it differs with
the nüvi model), on some models when you zoom in to 50m or less (nüvi
1490). On the new nüvi 3790 they will not be shown at all. On this you
can only see a POI on the map when doing a search, select a POI and
press the "Show on map" button.
When POIs are shown on the map they are shown without the name (this is
true for all nüvis which I had occasion to lay my hands on).
- Favorites (the symbols) are always shown on the map. Sometimes even
with name (alas not on all devices).
Of course: many older Garmin devices do not allow a large number of
favorites, so you have to stick to using POIs instead. With nüvi 865 and
nüvi 1490 I had no problem loading several thousand favorites.
When you prefer to have the waypoints as favorites then it is only
necessary to copy the GPX-file to the GPX-folder in the Garmin device.
It would be useful if all <wpt> entries in the GPX-file had the
following structure:
<wpt lat="--LATITUDE--" lon="--LONGITUDE--">
<name>--NAME--</name>
<sym>Campground</sym>
<extensions>
<gpxx:WaypointExtension
xmlns:gpxx="
<gpxx:Categories<gpxx:Category>Camping</gpxx:Category</gpxx:Categories>
</gpxx:WaypointExtension>
</extensions>
</wpt>
In this example I use --UPPERCASE-- to indicate variable data that must
be filled in.

Important are the <sym> and the <gpxx:Category> tags. They specify which
symbol to use on the map, and in which category of favorites to place
the waypoints.
The complete <wpt> structure for the favorites as it is accepted by
nüvis is:
<wpt lat="--LATITUDE--" lon="--LONGITUDE--">
<name>--NAME--</name>
<sym>--SYMBOL--</sym>
<extensions>
<gpxx:WaypointExtension
xmlns:gpxx="
<gpxx:DisplayMode>SymbolAndName</gpxx:DisplayMode>
<gpxx:Categories<gpxx:Category>--CATEGORY--</gpxx:Category</gpxx:Categories>
<gpxx:Address>
<gpxx:StreetAddress>--STREET--</gpxx:StreetAddress>
<gpxx:City>--CITY--</gpxx:City>
<gpxx:State>--STATE--</gpxx:State>
<gpxx:Country>--COUNTRY--</gpxx:Country>
</gpxx:Address>
<gpxx:PhoneNumber
Category="Phone">--PHONE-NUMBER--</gpxx:PhoneNumber>
</gpxx:WaypointExtension>
</extensions>
</wpt>
The --UPPERCASE-- items are to be replaced by appropriate data. If data
for such an item is not available (e.g. no phone number) then this tag
may be omitted.
Unfortunately, some Garmin devices don't care about the
<gpxx:DisplayMode> tag and display only the symbol.