Re: [Gpsbabel-misc] Preserving comments in Google Earth to MapSource conversion?

[Francois V. <fra...@gm...>]

On Nov 13, 2007 8:29 AM, Robert Lipe <rob...@gm...> wrote:
> On Nov 12, 2007 9:03 AM, Francois Visagie <fra...@gm...> wrote:
>
> > Is there any way of converting from Google Earth to MapSource that
> > retains Comments? It isn't important which exact file formats are used
>
> Not really.
>
> The problem is that KML is wildly expressive.  Those balloons can contain
> all kinds of wacky HTML and even flash (!) images.   I've done some prototyping
> of modifications that tried to read the balloons and bust them down to something
> that made sense to other programs didn't result in a satisfying
> experience for any
> substantial percentage of the KML found "in the wild".
>
> I was able to come up with special cases that worked well for a tiny percentage
> of the world's KML but it just didn't work well in the general case.

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the response. And I can appreciate how Google Earth
elements that do not have GPS equivalents make handling difficult
during conversion.

Some interesting feedback - after my initial post, I ran the KML file
through GPSBabel into all the formats that MapSource supports, trying
all available options with each. Waypoint->Route conversion in LOC
doesn't work, but interestingly enough, all of LOC, GPX and MPS
formats preserve KML waypoint comments. Too well in fact! Those with
no comment have their names written into the Comment field. So it
turns out only GDB output doesn't observe KML Comments.

Kind regards,
Francois