File Format Questions

Everyone seemed to have the GPS data downloading working well. Several of you had questions about which program to use for the different tasks. Also, the file formats are important. As you work with digital geographic data you will find that file formats can really get confusing.

In USA Photomaps everything is included in the program. It is really not meant to share data with other applications. If you look in the program folder you will see that data is stored in xml format files. Xml  is a data base specification for text files. Many programs use it in one form or another. One more USA Photomaps hint. It’s best to create a new file (Map Location) for each area you work in. It makes it easier to store the waypoints and tracks separately. Also, when you open the file it will got directly to the area you are interested in.

DNR Garmin is a utility program. It doesn’t really do much by itself. It prepares the data for use by another program. Most of the time we convert the data to ArcView shape files (another format). In our case we are converting the data to kml format. Kml is a special text file that Google Earth and Google Maps can read.  

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