Re: [Gpsbabel-misc] Can GPSBabel create TomTom .ov2 files with Phone number?

[Robert L. <rob...@gp...>]

It means more than "phone number" is an afterthought in our central data
structure. The place it was needed first was in a Garmin-specific format so
it got stuck in a Garmin extension. In 2001 when our internal data struct,
multiplied times the tens of thousands of points that were possible at a
time, especially on a multiple file merge, could easily overrun the amount
of virtual memory of the computers of some (In 2001, people were still
using computers from the mid-early 90's...) we were pretty conservative
about what went into that structure. It'd be pretty easy to argue that
"phone number" is a common enough thing that it should move into class
Waypoint, but it's probably worth something clever to keep them out of the
trackpoints.

The unicsv reader/writer does do phone and phone2 so it should make it into
the garmin extensions in GPX and gpi, but I wouldn't be surprised if there
are issues as phone numbers aren't exactly a location-based concept that's
the base of what we do. It _probably_ works.

RJL




On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 12:33 PM, Robert Morton <Ro...@mo...> wrote:

> Many thanks for considering this.
>
>
>
> Whilst it would be nice to have GPSBabel concatenate the POI name and
> phone number for TomTom it’s not really a problem for me as I can get Excel
> to do that for me.
>
>
>
> If anybody would be able to produce code to allow adding phone numbers to
> TomTom .ov2 format POIs then that would be great.
>
>
>
> May I ask one more question. You said that “our entire concept of ‘phone
> number’ is tied into a Garmin format-specific data structure” does that
> mean that my master file that uses Name and Phone (once it’s a .csv file)
> can be fed into GPSBabel to create a Garmin POI file with phone numbers?
> Sorry I don’t have any Garmin products to test that on.
>
>
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> RobertM.
>
>
>
> *From: *<rob...@gm...> on behalf of Robert Lipe <
> rob...@gp...>
> *Date: *Monday, 27 February 2017 at 07:57
>
> *To: *Robert Morton <Ro...@mo...>
> *Cc: *"gps...@li..." <gpsbabel-misc@lists.
> sourceforge.net>
> *Subject: *Re: [Gpsbabel-misc] Can GPSBabel create TomTom .ov2 files with
> Phone number?
>
>
>
> In general, we prioritize getting data INTO undocumented, reverse
> engineered file formats over getting such data out of formats, especially
> one like this where it's likely that any such data came from an external
> source that had better demarcation anyway. It's doubly problematic for us
> because we're all about location and our entire concept of "phone number"
> is tied into a Garmin format-specific data structure so some restructuring
> is probably required.
>
> That said, if any budding babel-heads out here wanted to produce code and
> work with Robert Morton on sample data files and produce a change
> (including doc, test cases, etc.) and propose a patch, I'd be willing to
> review and integrate it.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 1:02 PM, Robert Morton <Ro...@mo...>
> wrote:
>
> I’m not aware of any special handling that is required for phone numbers
> in the .ov2 file.
>
>
>
> I use an Excel .xlsx file to hold the name and phone columns separate. I
> then run the concatenation formula to combine the name and phone columns
> into one field with the > character separating the name and phone number. I
> then save the .xlsx file as a.csv UTF-8 file.
>
>
>
> If an .ov2 file has POIs with both name and telephone number then at the
> moment GPSBabel will see the name and phone number as text of a name, i.e.
> POI-name>POI-number (Where POI-number is of course a number)
>
>
>
> What would be fantastic is if GPSBabel could read an .ov2 file and if it
> finds a > then it knows that there are Name and Phone fields and so to use
> the > as a delimiter, with text on the left of the > as the name field and
> text on the right of the > as a telephone number. The > is then ignored and
> not placed in either field.
>
>
>
> There doesn’t need to be any error checking of the number as there are too
> many formats as the number of digits in telephone numbers can vary
> depending on the region. Error checking of the number should be left to the
> user, except for ensuring that just numbers follow the > symbol.
>
>
>
> By the way, TomTom’s POIs in their own products are extended with fields
> for URL, email, etc. Unfortunately, TomTom have so far not made public (and
> probably never will) how to create extended POIs. Therefore the most that
> we can code on a TomTom .ov2 POI file is name and telephone number.
>
>
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> RobertM
>
>
>
> *From: *<rob...@gm...> on behalf of Robert Lipe <
> rob...@gp...>
> *Date: *Friday, 24 February 2017 at 18:07
> *To: *Robert Morton <Ro...@mo...>
> *Cc: *"gps...@li..." <gpsbabel-misc@lists.
> sourceforge.net>
> *Subject: *Re: [Gpsbabel-misc] Can GPSBabel create TomTom .ov2 files with
> Phone number?
>
>
>
> Thanx for the good explanation.
>
> Looking at tomtom.cc, I don't see any special handling for phone number,
> which is a field type we really don't think too much about in GPSBabel. So
> if there's any special handling required in the .ov2 file for it, we don't
> do that. If the device itself parses phone numbers after the >, it should
> be fine, but we dont' know of a special place in the ov2 for it.
>
> If you have addition information about the ov2 format on how to store or
> retrieve phone data from that format, we'd welcome changes to ov2 to handle
> it.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 7:05 AM, Robert Morton <Ro...@mo...>
> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> Firstly, I am a newbie to GPSBabel, so apologies if I’m doing something
> wrong either here or with GPSBabel.
>
>
>
> It is possible to use the phone keyword to include a telephone number in a
> TomTom .ov2 POI file, where there is a number in the phone field?
>
>
>
> This is done by adding a Greater Than Symbol, i.e. ">" (without quotes),
> after the POI description in the name field followed by the phone number.
> (e.g. "My House>441234222444" for telephone number +44 1234 222444
> <+44%201234%20222444> ).
>
>
>
> I am using Universal csv with field structure in first line (unicsv). I am
> using the keyword “phone” for the phone number but I can’t seem to get
> GPSBabel to including the phone number in the TomTom .ov2 file.
>
>
>
> I’m using Mac GPSBabel 1.5.4.
>
> I’m converting .csv (saved via TextEdit as Unicode UTF-8) to .ov2.
>
> GPSBabel input file is set to “Universal csv with field structure in first
> line”
>
>
>
> I have 4 columns in csv file: Longitude (column A); Latitude (column B);
> Name (column C); and Phone (column D)
>
>
>
> I can concatenate the name column and the phone column (if it contains a
> number) with a separating Greater Than Symbol into a new column, in MS
> Excel. I then copy & paste special (value) into a final column and then
> delete the unnecessary columns to be ready to convert to a csv file and
> then pass through GPSBabel. However it would be nice if this could all be
> done in GPSBabel as it would remove a lot of steps and make things easier
> to explain. By the way the MS Excel concatenation formula that I use is:
>
>
>
> =C1&IF(D1="","",">"&D1)
>
>
>
> Information on how to create a TomTom .ov2 POI file with telephone number
> can be seen:
>
> http://www.tomtom.com/lib/doc/TomTomTips/index.html?poi_
> third_party_tools.htm
>
>
>
> Many thanks,
>
> RobertM
>
>
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