How to install themes for vector maps

This is an advanced topic and it works only with maaloo Outdoor 8  Version 2.9.3.1 or newer.

This app can use OpenStreetMap vector map files in the mapsforge-format. Currently the version 0.3 of mapsforge is supported with some limitations.

You can import themes into the app. Themes are drawing rules for the vector data. Which data has to be drawn and which color has to be used decides the theme.

Themes are organized in a .zip-File with normally two folders ‘symbols’ and ‘patterns’ which contain .png-icons. SVG-Icons are not supported. The ‘patterns’-folder can be deleted because patterns are not supported.
The .zip-file contains one or more XML-files with the drawing rules. The files must not be saved in an additional folder as parent folder.

The .zip file structure should look like this:

my_theme.zip / symbols / icon1.png    (and many more Icons)
my_theme.zip / theme1.xml
my_theme.zip / theme2.xml

Important! Windows Phone does not allow to link .zip files with apps for direct access. The solution is to rename the file from .zip to .mtz (Map Theme Zip ;). The app is associated with the file extension ‘.mtz’ and knows that this file is a zip-file.

You should transfer the MTZ-file to your phone, e.g. by mail. Click on the .mtz-file which will open maaloo Outdoor 8 and import the theme.

Afterwards the theme should appear in the theme selector. Press the ‘…’-button to select the theme from the imported themes list. Press the green OK-button to use the selected theme.

To enable the full rule dependencies to the map data you should disable the speed optimization in the map options. Map / Map options / Map / Speed Optimization = None. The default settings for this option is Medium which disables some types of ways and tags in lower zoom levels, to speed up the rendering somewhat.

There are some sources of themes in the Internet. The themes for mapsforge 0.5 are not fully supported. Better use the mapsforge 0.3 themes. If there are ready made zip’s for download, you should use the ‘normal’ or ‘PC’ versions. the specialized versions for certain apps have different folder structures.

 

Advertisement