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:
- Stored in decimal degrees (hdd.ddddd) or degrees and decimal minutes (hdd mm.mmmm).
- d=degrees, m=minutes
- h=N or S for latitude, h=W or E for longitude. If no hemisphere is specified, then positive latitudes are Northern hemisphere, positive longitudes are Eastern hemisphere.
- PathAway 3 stores only in decimal degrees.
- PathAway 3 stores only in WGS 84 datum format. Datum is not specified in earlier versions.
Examples:
45.124 -79.342
N45 23.123 W79 22.943
N45.823 W79.129

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

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

Icon:
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:
- Can be up to 4000 characters.
- Any Ascii value except comma is allowed, unless contained inside double quotes.

 

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)