How to create offline maps?

[Robin Paulson]

2008/8/14 jollyr0ger <jollyr0g3r at gmail.com>:
> Hi I want to create a complete map of italy or of a single city. But I want
> to download it entirely and add it to TangoGPS. Now I can download the map
> from Openstreetmap (e.g.
> http://download.geofabrik.de/osm/europe/italy.osm.bz2) in .osm format. Now
> how I can do to put it into the Tangogps maps? And how?

complicated answer:
.osm is a text format (you can open it in vi or whatever if you really
want to), and tangogps uses image files
the .osm files can be 'rendered' to images using various software
(mapnik, osmarender, kosmos - see the osm wiki for more info), but
it's not the easiest task in the world

short answer:
you will get better/faster results by downloading and caching the
image tiles for your area, which tangogps can then use. there's a way
to do this in tangogps (right-click on the map, select download) or
using various other pieces of software, including a perl script in the
osm svn repo:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/SVN