Why is Osmand unable to read .osm format?

[Robin]

As I understand it, .osm files are for storing POIs. So why can't Osmand just read them?

I am trying to import my POIs from Google My Maps. The recommended procedure seems to be: (1) convert the .kml export to .osm using GPS Babel, (2) install OsmandMapCreator and possibly Java to make it run, (3) convert the .osm file to .obf using OsmandMapCreator, (4) put the .obf file into Osmand's folder in Android.

What a fuss for something so simple! This needs to be far simpler!

(And I couldn't even get it to work: OsmandMapCreator was taking forever to process 100 POIs so I cancelled it.)

The vague description of .obf format is "map file", which would suggest "tile" and would also explain the time taken to generate it. But I don't need to import a map, I just need the POIs! Which are already in the .osm.

What am I missing?

[john whelan]

The .obf format is much compressed compared to .osm, less than a tenth the size? and all the POIs etc are indexed and building the indexes takes time.

Cheerio John

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[Robin]

Thanks, but that does not make sense. If you look at the structure of .osm you can clearly see that it is just a bunch of map coordinates in XML. Example here:

https://code.google.com/p/osmand/wiki/CreatingKMLFile

I am as confused as ever. Why cannot Osmand just plot this on top of whatever map tile is loaded? And if not, why not and when is it getting fixed?

[Max Erickson]

Osmand uses GPX for simple lists of POIs. It's an output option in gpsbabel.

obf is a binary format designed to be efficient with large amounts of data. Some sort of more efficient format is needed for regional maps, so I guess direct support for .osm would be extra work with little benefit.


Max

[Harry van der Wolf]

OsmAnd uses its own proprietary format .obf that can contain multiple datatypes. POIs is one of them.

The osm format is an exchange format, not a format OsmAnd uses.

You can indeed use a gpx file for a small number of POIs or you need to convert to OBFusing OsmAndMapCreator.

Check the osmand.net site for FAQs andother help pages.

Harry

[john whelan]

Because xml is very verbose and OSMAND typically works on devices with not that much memory or storage.  Locally Ottawa, Canada is 256,851 Kb in osm and 25,281 Kb in .obf format. Because many of the devices also have limited processing power if you index everything before hand then the device doesn't have to process so much data to display a result.

So for most people it works transparently.

Cheerio John

[Robin]

Okay, it all makes more sense now. I will try GPX for my POIs.

Thanks for the explanations (lacking elsewhere), I hope this thread will be useful to others in my situation.