Does anyone know if there is some software for Europe that is similar to Anquet or Memory Map?

I am thinking in terms of walking/hiking style route planners for the Alpine regions including the Austrian Tyrol.

Any ideas?

Rich

I have the French IGN Rando CD for the fairly large area around Chamonix, which is identical to the 1:25000 blue maps. The trouble is the mapping software is nowhere near as good as the UK OS maps we all know and love. For starters, the map is a scan, and not of the same digital quality. Also, the GPS aspect is clearly an afterthought just to get the letters GPS on the box, as it is virtually hopeless compared to Memory Map. I'm planning the TMB for this summer and will need to transfer the waypoints to the GPS and then download them into GPSU to write names and route information before transferring back up to the GPS. Also, the maps stop at the French borders, unlike the paper ones. Having said all that, it's better than nothing and is the best you'll get for France. I paid 40 euros at Amazon.fr, so at that price you can't expect too much anyway.

I also have the official OS-equivalent digital maps of Bavaria, which go down partway into the Austrian Alps. This is at 1:50000 and is probably even worse than the French one, as it uses overlays for waypoints. This was 40 euros at Amazon.de and is marginally better than nothing.

What I need is a GPS program which can read these maps, but I haven't found one yet.

You can also get 1:50000 maps of Switzerland, but these cost about 480SFr and I wouldn't want to risk it after the other experiences.

You'd think there would be a market for decent program writers to do a proper job on these foreign maps, but no doubt there are licencing issues.

Things are a lot easier if you use a PDA and GPS rather than a Garmin type GPS. If you have the maps or scans try emapzone from emapzone.com. It has most of the features of Memory Map but at a fraction of the price. You will have to set three "known points" on the map to give the GPS a fix, after which it should work in the same way as MM.

The problem I have is that both maps use a format which can't be read by anything else, because of licencing. In theory, Memory Map and the others can read BSB-format maps, but neither of these two are that. I've tried MM, GPSU and Oziexplorer, but they simply won't import it. If emapzone can read these formats I'll buy it today, but I suspect it won't be any more use. I'm afraid I can't be bothered with scanning and calibrating maps, especially after paying good money for software. I think I'm just going to write them off to experience.

The emapzone software is at least extremely cheap at 20 euros. The link has moved to http://phgiraud.free.fr/eMapZone/

Just checked it out. It looks similar to GPSU and Gartrip which do the same for free, with some limitations. As it works from scans only I don't think it will read proprietary formats, though.
Any hackers out there?