Articles about map export formats, tools and OpenStreetMap data use cases.
HDF5 from NCSA/HDF Group 1998: chunked binary, parallel I/O, climate + physics + geo, OSM analytics export to .h5.
Deep guide to GPX (GPS Exchange Format): what's inside the TopoGrafix XML format, standard history since 2002, which navigators and apps support it, pros and cons. How to get a GPX route from OpenStreetMap for Garmin, Strava, Komoot, and OsmAnd in 30 seconds.
GeoPackage Tiles — official OGC extension for storing raster and vector tiles in a single SQLite file. Architecture, MBTiles differences, GDAL conversion workflow.
GML is the OGC and ISO 19136 XML standard for geodata: backbone of INSPIRE, CityGML, AIXM; v3.2.1 (2007) is most common; supported by QGIS, ArcGIS, FME, GeoServer.
Khronos Group's glTF 2.0 since June 2017: JSON + .bin + PBR materials, Draco compression, GLB binary container, OSM building export with extrusion for three.js and Cesium.
GLB as binary form of glTF 2.0 by Khronos: chunked layout, PBR materials, web 3D viewers, OSM building single-file .glb export.
GeoParquet deep dive: Apache Parquet + OGC geo extension, the 1.1 release (Sept 2024), bbox covering, querying via DuckDB Spatial, Athena, BigQuery, and the OSM export pipeline.
Deep guide to GeoTIFF: TIFF with coordinate tags from NASA/JPL and OGC, version 1.1 standard from 2019, how to open in QGIS and export from OpenStreetMap.
Deep guide to GeoPackage: open OGC standard on SQLite, single-file ecosystem for vector, raster, tiles and QML styles, Shapefile replacement.
GeoJSON-Seq (RFC 8142, 2017): stream of features, RS/LF delimiters, tippecanoe + BigQuery + Spark.
GeoArrow from Apache Arrow geo-WG (Kyle Barron, 2022): IPC zero-copy, interleaved coords, GeoParquet 1.1 backend.
Garmin Custom Maps KMZ for Oregon/Colorado/Etrex: up to 100 JPEG overlays, 1 MP limit, ≤500 MB, ≤120 km longitude span. Ready OSM render in 5 minutes without IMG build.