This page describes a historic artifact in the history of OpenStreetMap. It does not reflect the current situation, but instead documents the historical concepts, issues, or ideas.
About
The OSM Binary Format was the data format, the WhereAmI, a map application for SymbianOS, used. This page describes additions to that format.
Impact on OpenStreetMap
It was one of the multiple attempts to find a more performant file format for OSM vector data compared to PBF. Nowadays (2025), map data for mobile applications is often stored in formats used by the application themselves (e.g. OsmAnd, Organic Maps). Tiles—vector and raster—can be stored in MBTiles as container format.
Reason for being historic
There is no known application using this file format.
Captured time
2025
Enumeration for values assigned to roles associated with members of relations.
The type (Node/Way/Relation) is encoded by the range of the number.
Node (0-62)
Relation (63-127)
Way (128-191)
spare (192-255)
Within these two ranges the top values are reserved for types that need extra space to be defined.
""=>0,//63//128 //used when grouping items to give them common tags
"from"=>1,
"to"=>2,
"via"=>3,
"outer"=>4,
"inner"=>5,
"across"=>6,
"under"=>7,
"through"=>8,
"outline"=>9,
"edge"=>10,
"location_hint"=>11,
"pointer"=>12,
"target"=>13,
"forward"=>14,
"backward"=>15,
"spare"=>16,
"fence"=>17,
"entrance"=>18, //82//146
//divider 37-46/101-110/165-174/229-238 indicates a 32bit number is defined next
//divider 47-63/111-127/175-191/239-255 indicates a 16bit number is defined next
"stop"=>47,
"forward_stop"=>48,
"backward_stop"=>49,
These specifiers have to have the number encoded after the role:
