Dealing with GPX(XML) files and mapping software. Suggestions?

[portlandatheist]

I have a Garmin GPS and Garmin's mapping software Mapsource. I have one very big complaint with the software, and that is if I open a GPX file, edit it, and then save it, I lose all private extensions and only retain the extensions standard to GPX.
I'll give a real world example. I love to geocache and waypoints obtained from geocaching.com have additional elements and attributes in their XML via their private extension as specified in the header:

<gpx xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" version="1.0" creator="Groundspeak Pocket Query" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/0 http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/0/gpx.xsd http://www.groundspeak.com/cache/1/0 http://www.groundspeak.com/cache/1/0/cache.xsd" xmlns="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/0">

So I have two questions:
Is there a way I can let mapsource know not to delete these extensions by importing the geocaching.com schema somehow? Alternatively, does anybody know of a good alternative software to mapsource that won't garble my GPX and remove my geocaching extensions?

[GeeMack]

So I have two questions:
Is there a way I can let mapsource know not to delete these extensions by importing the geocaching.com schema somehow? Alternatively, does anybody know of a good alternative software to mapsource that won't garble my GPX and remove my geocaching extensions?


Maybe try something that converts various formats like GPX and CSV from/to each other. Here's a piece of software for Windows, the Extra POI Editor (http://turboccc.wikispaces.com/Extra_POI_Editor), which seems versatile. I've only used it a bit, but it seems to work well. It's designed mainly for creating/editing and adding POIs to the Garmin nuvi GPSs, but it looks like it can do a lot of what you're trying to do.

I keep most of my location files in Open Office spreadsheets, save them as CSV files, and add them to the Garmin with their POI Loader. But I think you can use that Extra POI Editor to save them as GPX files with (I think) as many as 22 fields.

[portlandatheist]

Maybe try something that converts various formats like GPX and CSV from/to each other. Here's a piece of software for Windows, the Extra POI Editor (http://turboccc.wikispaces.com/Extra_POI_Editor), which seems versatile. I've only used it a bit, but it seems to work well. It's designed mainly for creating/editing and adding POIs to the Garmin nuvi GPSs, but it looks like it can do a lot of what you're trying to do.

I keep most of my location files in Open Office spreadsheets, save them as CSV files, and add them to the Garmin with their POI Loader. But I think you can use that Extra POI Editor to save them as GPX files with (I think) as many as 22 fields.

Thanks for the link and I did check it out. Unfortunately, just like mapsource and every other software I've used so far, upon saving a gpx file, POI Extra simply removes all unknown extensions (geocaching extensions in my case) and all the data along with it. If I want to keep my data, I'm stuck with editing my GPX files with a text editor. I couldn't find any setting in the software that would prevent it from doing this.