Suggestion: Fully lossless export/import format
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I am increasingly using AI for enhancing my route maps - there is huge untapped potential out there.
I have discovered that ChatGPT can work with a GPX 1.1 export from my MRA, make changes, and produce a file which imports quite well back into MRA. However, it loses a number of the proprietary attributes of an MRA map.
For example, I can have AI locate a via point in the GPX and rewrite the title and commentary for that via point; but on re-import I lose the colour and icon for that via point.
MRA has quite a rich internal waypoint model: type, icon, colour, name, pause, note and off-road status are all separate properties in the current Routeplanner. And GPX 1.1 includes an <extensions> element, inside which an application can store arbitrary XML in its own namespace. That means MyRoute-app could encode essentially all of its waypoint attributes while still producing a valid GPX 1.1 file.
My suggestion is that there should be a “GPX 1.1 – MyRoute-app lossless” export format which would simultaneously be:
- a standards-compliant GPX readable by Garmin, TomTom and other applications;
- a portable backup of an MRA route;
- completely round-trippable back into MRA;
- suitable for tools like the editing we can do with AI, without losing colours, settings, via-point classifications etc.
Ultimately there may be better solutions to integrate AI into MRA directly, or to build a special purpose GPT for map editing. But for the moment, I think the simplest and easiest approach would be a lossless export format.
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I am increasingly using AI for enhancing my route maps - there is huge untapped potential out there.
I have discovered that ChatGPT can work with a GPX 1.1 export from my MRA, make changes, and produce a file which imports quite well back into MRA. However, it loses a number of the proprietary attributes of an MRA map.
For example, I can have AI locate a via point in the GPX and rewrite the title and commentary for that via point; but on re-import I lose the colour and icon for that via point.
MRA has quite a rich internal waypoint model: type, icon, colour, name, pause, note and off-road status are all separate properties in the current Routeplanner. And GPX 1.1 includes an <extensions> element, inside which an application can store arbitrary XML in its own namespace. That means MyRoute-app could encode essentially all of its waypoint attributes while still producing a valid GPX 1.1 file.
My suggestion is that there should be a “GPX 1.1 – MyRoute-app lossless” export format which would simultaneously be:
- a standards-compliant GPX readable by Garmin, TomTom and other applications;
- a portable backup of an MRA route;
- completely round-trippable back into MRA;
- suitable for tools like the editing we can do with AI, without losing colours, settings, via-point classifications etc.
Ultimately there may be better solutions to integrate AI into MRA directly, or to build a special purpose GPT for map editing. But for the moment, I think the simplest and easiest approach would be a lossless export format.
Ultimately there may be better solutions to integrate AI into MRA directly, or to build a special purpose GPT for map editing. But for the moment, I think the simplest and easiest approach would be a lossless export format.
Apparently, MRA planner and the MRA Next navigator are currently going through updates to the next major versions. I can't imagine a scenario where the team would not take the opportunity to integrate AI into the tools. Let's see what they come up with.
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Well that would be great. But I hope if AI integration is under discussion then the developers will open some conversations about what we want from AI. Or we could have a separate thread in this in the forum. I’d be glad to contribute what I have been using AI for so far.
And I still think a lossless export/re-import would be straightforward to implement and very valuable in the interim and probably long term.
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