Text sizes of a custom basemap

[mattropolis]

I have a GPS basemap consisting of railway centrelines and mile markers as points. The input data comes from 1 line shapefile and 3 point shapefiles for mile markers at different scale levels. The map covers most of Canada.

My GPS receiver is a Garmin GPSmap 62, but I've also tried it on 60 series and eTrex 20 receivers.

My workflow is to design the map in GPSMapEdit 2.1 and then use cGPSmapper, MapSetToolKit, Garmin BaseCamp, and NSIS to create an installer for the end user.

The MP file has 5 levels

Levels=5
Level0=23
Level1=20
Level2=19
Level3=18
Level4=17

The centrelines are coded as 0x0001, and the default symbol is replaced with a custom  type symbol. These only show up on levels 0-2.
The important mile markers are 0x0100 and show up at all scales. (levels 0-3)
Another set of mile markers are 0x0500 (levels 0-2)
The most detailed markers are 0x0a00 (levels 0-1)

I want the mile markers to be a small dot, that's why I've picked city symbols. As long as it is small it doesn't exactly matter what it looks like.

My problem is that the end user wants to have the mile marker labels to be larger. Even when I go into Setup Map on the device and change the Text Size to Largest it still shows the points with a very small font.

Should I change to a different point symbol type or a custom type?
Do any of the other Setup Map settings on the device have any effect? Auto Zoom, Zoom Levels or Detail? Not from what I have seen.

[Boyd]

If you want the most control over the appearance of the map you should use custom types. I use TYPViewer for this: https://sites.google.com/site/sherco40/

The extended labels option lets you change the text size, but this will give different results on different GPS units so you just have to try and see what happens. You can redefine any of the standard types and use your own bitmaps for the symbol if you like.

[mattropolis]

Thanks Boyd. I tried using TYPViewer , and it works fine. I like how you can see the custom symbol as you're making it, both in text and visually.  I didn't end up using the extended label option.

My workaround was to use a different symbol for higher zoom levels. For my mile markers I picked "0x0300 Large City" so that the symbol would be visible when zoomed way out, but the labels were too small.

At lower zoom levels, I picked a symbol '0x1604 Daybeacon, red'. These symbol types show up at large scales only, but what is useful is if the GPS receiver settings are changed, the labels can be set to large (or small).

In all cases the symbols were changed to custom types, but the label behavior seems to be tied to the original Garmin symbol type.