Gpx version
GPX Version
There are two GPX file versions that are available at Geocaching Australia.
You can select what version of the GPX file you receive by editing it in your settings.
Make your choice of version depending on what software you use to manage your geocaches. See the version details below for what is known to work.
A lot of software in the geocaching world will read the 1.0 version of the Geocaching Australia GPX files. GSAK is probably the most widely used and will read the Geocaching Australia GPX file without issues.
Some devices, such as Garmin GPS's do not read the Geocaching Australia 1.0 version of the files and will not load them as geocaches, only as waypoint or Points of Interest (POI's).
With Garmin entering the geocaching world, their devices will read the Groundspeak version 1.0 GPX files as well as a "non-standard" format which emulates the Groundspeak version 1.0 GPX files, but does not have the groundspeak namespace. This is commonly known in the open geocaching world as 1.1
GPX Version 1.0
- Works in some GPS receivers and software.
- Works in GSAK.
- Does not work in Garmin GPS receivers.
- Different between Geocaching Australia and Groundspeak
- The same betwen Geocaching Australia and the Open Caching network
Geocaching Australia commenced GPX file distribution in 2005 with an open format GPX version named version 1. This link gives information about that format and its use http://www.topografix.com/gpx_manual.asp
Version 1.0 of the Geocaching Australia GPX file contains the same information you would find in the GPX file distributed by Groundspeak a.k.a. geocaching.com but there was one very important distinction. The GPX file distributed by groundspeak uses specific namespaces for their schema. While this is not necessarily a problem it is a contentious issue in the groundspeak can at any time change their schema and thus require all places that use that schema to change or fail. This has been demonstrated when they added "attributes" to their schema causing a lot of poorly written GPX parsers to fail. Groundspeak eventually started distributing these files as 1.0.1 to distinguish them from 1.0 files.
You can see the version 1.0 schema for Geocaching Australia GPX files here. http://geocaching.com.au/geocache/1/geocache.xsd
You can see the version 1.0 schema for Groundspeak files here. http://www.groundspeak.com/cache/1/0/cache.xsd
Each field is defined and the values that each field are also defined. This allows you to interpret the GPX file using the same basis under which is was written.
GPX Version 1.1
- Works in some GPS receivers and software.
- Works in GSAK.
- Works in Garmin GPS receivers.
- Not produced by Groundspeak
- The same betwen Geocaching Australia and the Open Caching network
Geocaching Australia and the opencaching group now produce a Version 1.1 GPX file which can be read natively by GSAK and Garmin GPS's.
This link gives information about that format and its use http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1/gpx.xsd
Version 1.1 of the Geocaching Australia GPX file contains the same information you would find in the Version 1.0 GPX file but it does not contain the groundspeak namespaces. This is considered important by the open geocaching community.
You can see the version 1.1 schema for Geocaching Australia GPX files here. http://geocaching.com.au/geocache/1/1/geocache.xsd
Each field is defined and the values that each field are also defined. This allows you to interpret the GPX file using the same basis under which is was written.
