RFD: Best place and style for Additional Waypoints in GPX output?

[Steve8x8]

I'd like to change the style and place of the (currently large) table
of Additional Waypoints in GPX output.
My rationale is the finding that GPSr devices have limited (by
firmware) capacity for cache descriptions - e.g. the Garmin Oregon300
clips short descriptions at ~512 characters, long ones at ~8k.
I have uploaded a patch against lib/details.rb to the Issues page
which shrinks a 12kB (!) table to less than 2kB, but that may still be
too large.
My goal is something that can be used with a real GPSr in the field,
without carrying around heaps of paper printouts.

Some of the options I see (and like to discuss) are:
- a quick overview (merely list than table) that may go to the
beginning of the long (or short?) description
- option to have additional waypoint output (in XML <wpt> style)
- ...

At the moment, AddWPs are parsed into "additional_raw".
I have added "additional_short" (which takes "additional_raw" and
removes image and hypertext links, and condenses the remaining HTML
code a lot) to Issue #140.
I'm planning to have "additional_wpts" which consists of WPs converted
to proper XML suited for inclusion into GPX.

To be discussed:
- Include "hidden" waypoints? They have no coordinates set, and would
usually end up at the equator origin. My Oregon isn't happy about
it... and I'd prefer to be able to *enter* station coordinates without
colliding with existing but bogus ones.
- Since it can be essential to have access to the "Note:" part of the
waypoint description it should be copied into the cache (long)
description. WP desc fields get clipped at ~49 characters on the
Oregon. The "additional_short" table would do here.
- Are there similar limits to short|long|waypoint descriptions for
other GPSr devices?
- Anything else?

My coding attempts will show up over there, at the Issues page, again.

[Steve8x8]

On Sep 24, 1:54 pm, Steve8x8 <steffen.grunew...@gmx.net> wrote:
> I'd like to change the style and place of the (currently large) table
> of Additional Waypoints in GPX output.
> My rationale is the finding that GPSr devices have limited (by
> firmware) capacity for cache descriptions - e.g. the Garmin Oregon300
> clips short descriptions at ~512 characters, long ones at ~8k.

For 3.13.0, I had done some experimenting, and quickly reached the
short_description limit even with small waypoint tables.
There seems to be no alternative to placing it at the top of
long_description (at least for people who directly drop GPX files on
their GPSrs).
Short descriptions will be populated with attributes, and availability
warnings.

> My goal is something that can be used with a real GPSr in the field,
> without carrying around heaps of paper printouts.

Still there are about 5% caches which cannot be handled like this
(probably: not at all, never ever) - in particular the ones containing
images.

> To be discussed:
> - Include "hidden" waypoints? They have no coordinates set, and would
> usually end up at the equator origin. My Oregon isn't happy about
> it... and I'd prefer to be able to *enter* station coordinates without
> colliding with existing but bogus ones.

I still can't see _any_ advantage of having hidden wpts as Waypoints
on the unit (with fake coordinates).
But they may contain essential information: for example, GC1A3N7 has
the whole cache description in the waypoint notes.

Still unanswered question:

> - Are there similar limits to short|long|waypoint descriptions for
> other GPSr devices?

S.