PathAway Track, Route, and Point Database Format

General info:
- Standard Palm Database format. (Information can be obtained on the Palm OS Developers site at http://www.palmsource.com).
- All location data is stored in WGS84 Datum. In earlier versions, user may have used a different datum and kept a consistency of datum across maps and data. (ie. calibrate and capture GPS position in desired format)

Types:
The types of data used in this document are as follows:

Type Description
UInt16 2 byte (16 bit) number in Big Endian - Little Endian format.
byte 1 byte (8 bit) value.
char[] null terminated string in ASCII format.
byte[] array of bytes.

Palm Database Header:

The version # is 0, 1, or 3. Version 0 and 1 are identical. Version 3 has
some changes.
The identifier for a Waypoint database if file Type 'PoLi'
The identifier for a Track or Route database if file Type 'UsTr'

Track/Route APPINFO Structure (version 3)

The file structure of a Track and Route database are identical. To identify
whether the database is a track or a route database, you need to inspect the
appInfo header structure.

Name Type Size (bytes) Comments
reservedA byte[] 274 set to all 0's (zero's)
dirtyFlag byte 1 set to 1
DatabaseSubType byte 1 1=Route, 0=Track
DBattributes UInt16 2 set to 0
VehicleStr char[] 100 Null terminated ASCII string containing Name of Transportation icon. See Icon description format below. Max string length 99 characters.
reservedB byte[] 100 set to all 0's (zero's)

 


Database Record Structure:

- Records are Comma Delimited text as follows:

Latitude, Longitude, Elevation, Time, Name, Icon,Note

Latitude,Longitude Fields:
- Stored in decimal degrees (hdd.ddddd) or degrees and decimal minutes (hdd mm.mmmm).
- d=degrees, m=minutes
- Positive latitudes are Northern hemisphere, positive longitudes are Eastern hemisphere.
- Stores only in WGS 84 datum format. Datum is not specified in earlier versions.
Examples:
45.124, -79.342

Elevation Field:
- Numerical Stored in feet (fractions). ie. 843.74

Time Field:
- Time format is hhmmss.ss<space>yyyymmdd.
The date may be missing in older databases.
Time field may be omitted. Esp. for waypoint files.
Example:
083029.34 20030629 equals 8:30 am and 29.34 seconds, on June 29, 2003

Name Field:
- Can be up to 32 characters.
- Any Ascii value except comma is allowed.

Icon Field:
Number of built in icon, or [iconDBname:icon]. iconDBname is the icon database name (without the .prc extension). icon is the name of the icon. Example icon:gas means the icon.prc file, gas icon.
Fixed Icon Symbols:

0=Default Point symbol.

1=House
2=Intersection
3=Landmark
4=Small Black circle

Note Field:
- Can be up to 4000 characters.
- Any Ascii value except comma is allowed, unless contained inside double quotes.
- For PathAway 4 and higher, the Note may also contain XML tags which represent the sound and picture attachments to the point record. The xml is appended to the end of the description and prefixed with "?xml?".

Changes to the file formats from version 1 to 3:

- In version 3 there is some binary data following the comma delimited data. This can be ignored. The binary data is used for performance only.
- In version 0 and 1, the tracks and routes database records start at record 2. Record 1 was used internally. This has been removed for version 3. All records in version 3 start at record 1 (the first record)