The output includes a fair bit of clutter in the form of tags that are used by Google Earth but are ignored by Google maps.Ĭ. Here is the documentation from Google ( ) and there are examples in the tutorial. You must save a kml file with UTF-8 encoding. I use the free Notepad++ ( ) for editing kml files. Since kml files are a type of xml file, it really helps a lot to use an editor designed for working with xml files. See the kml source file I used in the above example map for one approach for organizing the contents of a kml file. to see the default map (Google’s campus at Kirkland, WA) Oh, and anything you include in the tag is treated as a caption and gets welded to the top of the map. To fully specify a map, use all 4 parameters.īut what if you don’t have your own website for hosting your kml file online? No worries. You can store your kml file in the cloud as a Google Document txt file and read it with the gmap4 map viewer. Since I’ve already given you a bunch to think about in this post, I’ll save those details for later. Teaser: If several people are working together to make a trail map for an area, everyone in that group can pool their data by directly editing the same file in the Google cloud.
Others have also asked if my map supports GPX files. No, I am sorry but my map does not support reading GPX files. The standard Google map viewer also does not support reading GPX files.
In order to read GPX files I would have to add code to my map to convert GPX files to KML files. The good news is that there is freeware code available online that I should be able to copy and use.