Navigation - International chars in streetnames.

**Cirion** · 11-26-2006, 06:45 AM

Hi David. I have tried asking this several times now, but I still believe you have not understood me at all. I'm giving this another go since it is EXTREMELY important in countries outside USA.

International chars are variations of letters that non English speaking languages use to write words that cannot be written with the English alphabet. Usually in Europe they are variations of the letters A E and O, but they always are variations of a letter in the English alphabet.

Now, to understand how important they are, try removing the letters A E and O from the OSK and try to write New York.... Impossible! You will have to press N and then scroll all the way down till you find New York....

Now you say "But you can alter the letters in the OSK and add your own letters?". True, but there is no space for them, except if you add them to the page with numbers... International Characters are not replacements of letters in the alphabet, they are additions to the alphabet. Most languages use 3 of them. Again, try to put A E and O on the page with numbers on, and you will see how frustrating it is to have them there, and not on the first page.

Then there is another problem, not usually found in the US.... Lets say I want to drive to another country.... I live in Norway and have just 1 hour drive to Sweden. Swedish uses its own set of international chars, and even if I added the Norwegian chars, I still cant write Swedish chars. If I drive to Spain (25 hour drive) I drive through Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, France and Spain.... Since all these countries use different international chars, all of those will have to be added so I can write addresses to hotels and other stops on the way.

Both Destinator and TomTom deal with these chars in a much smarter way than having a OSK with all these chars. Since all international chars are variations of English letters, they are treated as the same letter. So a street name that uses a international char, can be written with the letter in the OSK. So, all street names with a variations of A, are treated as A and sorted alphabetical as the same letter. No need for int. chars in the OSK

Since Destinator already has this feature, they might have it in your SDK. Please talk to them and get it in CF, it would make the navigation a lot more usable here in Europe.

**SOS** · 11-26-2006, 02:19 PM

Originally Posted by Cirion

cut....So a street name that uses a international char, can be written with the letter in the OSK. So, all street names with a variations of A, are treated as A and sorted alphabetical as the same letter. No need for int. chars in the OSK

I second that suggestion (or first it :-) ):
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/show...49&postcount=2

Originally Posted by SOS

TomTom does a mapping, which means that instead of adding extra country specific letters to the keyboard, they map the local letters to english letters, i.e. when I search for "Prøvensvej" the letter "ø" is mapped to "o", so I find it by typing "Provensvej" perhaps this kind of mapping is the best way to work around it?
People responsible for the translations, could define these mappings in the keyboard.xml file

As I suggested, the mapping could just be made configurable by the language-file administrators....

PS, keyboard.xml is probably the wrong file, since I now know there is a specific language file for the Navigation OSK, but then just add it there.

**veetid** · 11-26-2006, 02:47 PM

Originally Posted by Cirion

Hi David. I have tried asking this several times now, but I still believe you have not understood me at all. I'm giving this another go since it is EXTREMELY important in countries outside USA.

International chars are variations of letters that non English speaking languages use to write words that cannot be written with the English alphabet. Usually in Europe they are variations of the letters A E and O, but they always are variations of a letter in the English alphabet.

Now, to understand how important they are, try removing the letters A E and O from the OSK and try to write New York.... Impossible! You will have to press N and then scroll all the way down till you find New York....

Now you say "But you can alter the letters in the OSK and add your own letters?". True, but there is no space for them, except if you add them to the page with numbers... International Characters are not replacements of letters in the alphabet, they are additions to the alphabet. Most languages use 3 of them. Again, try to put A E and O on the page with numbers on, and you will see how frustrating it is to have them there, and not on the first page.

Then there is another problem, not usually found in the US.... Lets say I want to drive to another country.... I live in Norway and have just 1 hour drive to Sweden. Swedish uses its own set of international chars, and even if I added the Norwegian chars, I still cant write Swedish chars. If I drive to Spain (25 hour drive) I drive through Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, France and Spain.... Since all these countries use different international chars, all of those will have to be added so I can write addresses to hotels and other stops on the way.

Both Destinator and TomTom deal with these chars in a much smarter way than having a OSK with all these chars. Since all international chars are variations of English letters, they are treated as the same letter. So a street name that uses a international char, can be written with the letter in the OSK. So, all street names with a variations of A, are treated as A and sorted alphabetical as the same letter. No need for int. chars in the OSK

Since Destinator already has this feature, they might have it in your SDK. Please talk to them and get it in CF, it would make the navigation a lot more usable here in Europe.

I will take a look into this, shouldn't be that hard...

david