Peter Bennett wrote:

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:42:35 -0500, Jack Erbes
wrote:



For the most part, I would not buy hardware from Garmin because it would
mean I could use only Garmin's mapping/charting packages. Further, any
interoperability (automobile, marine, topo, etc.) would be limited to
what they wanted to market or allow and require additional purchases of
more Garmin mapping packages.


Almost all Garmin GPS receivers, like most other makes, will output
NMEA-0183 format data, which can be read by virtually all mapping
programs.

Garmin recievers only use the Garmin protocol for uploading and
downloading waypoints and routes, and for uploading Garmin's
proprietary maps or charts. Many non-Garmin programs can use the
Garmin protocol for waypoint and route transfers.

In my general inexperience with things Garmin, I may have some mistaken
impressions about the effect of the Garmin protocol. I thought data in
the Garmin proprietary format would not be read or used by an
application not specifically written to use it. In other words, if an
application was looking for NMEA data strings, it would not read any of
the Garmin proprietary data strings would it?

And I'm not trying to argue the point, I'm trying to learn more. Just
in case I have not already established my level of expertise here, I'll
say know that I know about enough to be dangerous. :)

Jack

--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA - jackerbes at adelphia dot net
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine.com)