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GGZ Format


gpsblake

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Just got a Oregon 600 and couldn't help but noticing that Garmin still, still doesn't support this format in Basecamp nor does Geocaching allow you to download in ggz format.

 

So the question is, is there any software other than GSAK that support it and is there any point in even trying to convert gpx files into ggz???

 

Thanks.

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There is a command line tool existing:

GGZGEN

Easy to use. Copy all gpx files in one directory where you copied the ggzgen.exe.

Then use

ggzgen.exe *.gpx yourggz.ggz

This will copy all gpx files in the ggz file.

On your Garmin you have to create a GGZ folder on Garmin where you can copy the ggz files.

 

Another tool only available for windows while us mac and linux users are cast aside. Are there any tools for unix based operating systems?

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There is a command line tool existing:

GGZGEN

Easy to use. Copy all gpx files in one directory where you copied the ggzgen.exe.

Then use

ggzgen.exe *.gpx yourggz.ggz

This will copy all gpx files in the ggz file.

On your Garmin you have to create a GGZ folder on Garmin where you can copy the ggz files.

 

Another tool only available for windows while us mac and linux users are cast aside. Are there any tools for unix based operating systems?

 

Awe, poor me.

 

If you want to use an OS that is only popular with a minority of users, why get upset when the software titles available are also few and far between? Just write one for yourself and share it in the community that uses your chosen OS!

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There is a command line tool existing:

GGZGEN

Easy to use. Copy all gpx files in one directory where you copied the ggzgen.exe.

Then use

ggzgen.exe *.gpx yourggz.ggz

This will copy all gpx files in the ggz file.

On your Garmin you have to create a GGZ folder on Garmin where you can copy the ggz files.

 

Another tool only available for windows while us mac and linux users are cast aside. Are there any tools for unix based operating systems?

 

I agree with the whining comment but will add...

Did you check if GPSBabel supports writing GGZ? I'm commuting and couldn't quickly tell.

Ggz is supposedly a zip file. Rename a ggz to zip and open it. Can you decipher the contents. If so, write a script/program. If you are running Linux you have to be brighter then all the windows users.

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I'm not familiar enough with the ggz file format to just write a converter myself. I assume if it were that easy, someone would have done it by now, and GPSBabel doesn't claim to support writing out to GGZ format, but maybe the website isn't as up to date as the program?

 

I get why Garmin might want to keep the file format proprietary for use on its own devices, but to provide no tools for users or developers to utilize the format makes it kinda useless.

Edited by Mineral2
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I took a look at the raw data that GSAK generates as part of it's process to create a GGZ file.

 

The last GGZ I generated was 10 MB in size (~2900 caches), with a 1.3 MB index file.

GPX files used to build it totaled 40 MB.

 

There are 10 GPX files in my case, with around 290ish caches in each one.

 

There is a separate XML index file that catalogs each cache within each GPX file.

 

It's set up similar to a TGZ file with sub-directories within it for the data and index.

The index sub-directory naming appears to use the same structure as a Java JAR file.

 

Mineral2, this might be of interest to you: https://github.com/rsaxvc/ggz-tools

 

Here's the post Viajero was referring to: Spinning green circle...

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Here's another thread where I have the awkward position of being both a mod and a 15+ year contributor. As a mod, I'll remind you to be respectful of each other. There's a lot of unnecessary roughness above.

 

As a "mere" poster, I happened to be involved in the creation of GPX, the creator of the first multi-platform GPX reader/writer, the creator of GPSBabel, and that guy that wrote War And Peace in "spinning green circle". I have some 15M-ish GPSBabel users and bought an Oregon 600 to riff on implementing .ggz support. First, the community requests/support simply wasn't there. A HUGE percentage of Clyde/GSAK's market needed/wanted it and I helped him/them through some early teething pains, but I think the number of requests I've seen for it in GPSBabelsville probably fit on a single hand. I actually implemented and checked in partial support for it in GPSBabel 1.5.3 which, for totally stupid reasons that were my fault, broke our GPX writer for files > 5MB. Only this holiday weekend did I get a 1.5.4 (mostly) out to correct this, though the source revert has been available for a while. I did the original implementation back in '15 http://forums.Ground...dpost&p=5519295 and spent months calling out for help, test feedback, etc. to be met with silence. My initial implementation worked OK for US english, but went up in flames if anyone did any multi-byte logs, cache names, or descriptions. The device would render trash or crash.

 

This is the dirty little secret of software. Things happen because someone wants them badly enough to make them happen. You put in in a few hours testing and describing a request, your cache-mate puts in a few hours translating to Elbonian, someone donates a GPS, someone pays an intern or student worker to implement and upstream something. If you can't point at the sugar daddy, it's probably you. GGZ in GPSBabel has no sugar daddy. I totally pulled it out of the 1.5.4 release, but if you're interested in working on it (I know where the skeletons are...) I'd welcome a champion to land them. A few hundred users writing tip notes on the backs of tens gets attention. I won't say that I've hit every branch on the way down, but I'm pleased that I identified enough while on a plane to GeoWoodstock to have not published a mostly working writer. I'm more happy to have (officially) not released a ggz writer than release one that breaks if someone uses an umlaut or accent grave.

 

For nerds willing to talk bits and bytes, our (GPSBabel's) remaining deal-breaker was when we moved to QXMLStreamWriter for output. StreamWriter is super awesome and it treats characters as characters, regardless if they're Windows Bloaty Bytes or sane UTF-8 encoded data, as in GPX itself. The way to write .ggz is to call the gpx writer and split the output, but then run a reader over the output (sound slow? Probably. But it's still faster than the battery powered device in your pocket.) to compute those indices (valet parking thingies) that I described before. The "problem" is that that ggz file wants a byte oriented (utf-8) index instead of a sane character count that's awesomely abstracted away from us. So we probably have to write the files to disk, read them back into memory, and then call C era strfoo instead of QStringfoo on them. Probably. At this point, it's about two years in my rear view memory, but I could absolutely coach someone that cared on the issues involved. GGZ absolutely makes [ stuff ] the problem of the writer to save the reader, which is a reasonable tradeoff of processor power in modern times.

 

If you're interested in working on ggz (doc, testing, implementation, funding, coding, whatever) please contact the gpsbabel mailing lists. It's quite dead right now.

 

RJL

Edited by robertlipe
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Thanks for the replies... I was able to convert 5,000+ geocaches to the ggz format which is more than what I have found in 14 years. Thanks to the person who told me I had to create a ggz folder as my unit didn't have the pre-loaded caches in it (which is good because I would have deleted it). One thing I did notice is that the child waypoints didn't load under the ggz format.

 

However, I don't see any performance issues with the gpx format with 5,000 geocaches so I think I am just going to update the unit via gpx files.

 

I just wish Garmin's own software would support their own proprietary format :( Okay,, enough pouting.

 

Thanks.

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However, I don't see any performance issues with the gpx format with 5,000 geocaches so I think I am just going to update the unit via gpx files.

 

This. Aside from Garmin keeping GGZ so secret even basecamp won't support it, if there are no performance advantages to using it, then there's no need for a new file format. Maybe the advantage comes when you have tens or hundreds of thousands of geocaches loaded, but let's be realistic - at no point have I needed, nor can I imagine a situation where I would need more than 10,000 geocache listings (give or take) on my device at any one time. There has never been a trip where pre-planning wasn't involved, and even if a spontaneous detour is made on a road trip, there's no reason why I can't stop at a public wifi hotspot and run a quick PQ, or just use my phone for a couple of caches.

 

I mean, I understand that some people have the "gotta get them all" mentality, but there's no way anyone can get them all in one fell swoop.

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Maybe the advantage comes when you have tens or hundreds of thousands of geocaches loaded, but let's be realistic - at no point have I needed, nor can I imagine a situation where I would need more than 10,000 geocache listings (give or take) on my device at any one time.

 

Well, I have. Holiday in Denmark visiting the whole country. We had accommodation all over the country from where we did daytrips. I had about 26/28 thousand caches loaded on my Oregon600. Did I need them all? No, but since I wasn't sure where we'd have time for caching it was nice to have all of them available wherever we were.

 

On local daytrips I also use GGZ (WPs as POI) loaded with the garminexport macro from GSAK because it's an easy way to have things organized even when I only load 500/600 caches.

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