There are some ancient BNA files on my hard disc, dating back to 1996. They were generated using some proprietary mapping software called “GoldenSoft Map View”. I used this programme in university while writing my thesis. At home, I used selfmade utilities I had written for my Atari ST.

The plan to convert those BNA files to GPX has been there for ages – even considering a re-write of my personal map viewer for those files in some object orientated language. But now, I encountered ogr2ogr which can do the job:

ogrinfo -ro -al -summary /mnt/BACKUP/D/map/world.bna
INFO: Open of `/mnt/BACKUP/D/map/world.bna’
using driver `BNA’ successful.

Layer name: world_points
Geometry: Point
Feature Count: 175
Extent: (-99.239204, -51.675117) – (178.408966, 64.260612)
Layer SRS WKT:
(unknown)
Primary ID: String (0.0)
Secondary ID: String (0.0)

Layer name: world_polygons
Geometry: Multi Polygon
Feature Count: 418
Extent: (-178.456192, -81.035141) – (190.044510, 83.616669)
Layer SRS WKT:
(unknown)
Primary ID: String (0.0)
Secondary ID: String (0.0)

Layer name: world_lines
Geometry: Line String
Feature Count: 3
Extent: (-180.010941, -85.472992) – (179.763107, 55.058968)
Layer SRS WKT:
(unknown)
Primary ID: String (0.0)
Secondary ID: String (0.0)

Looks nice, now give it a try:

ogr2ogr -f “GPX” /tmp/world-bna.gpx /mnt/BACKUP/D/map/world.bna
ERROR 6: Field of name ‘Primary ID’ is not supported in GPX schema. Use GPX_USE_EXTENSIONS creation option to allow use of the element.
ERROR 6: Field of name ‘Secondary ID’ is not supported in GPX schema. Use GPX_USE_EXTENSIONS creation option to allow use of the element.
ERROR 6: Geometry type of `Multi Polygon’ not supported in GPX.

ERROR 1: Terminating translation prematurely after failed
translation of layer world_polygons

Well, there is still some work left. But we are very close…

After all, it is possible to convert BNA to KML or ESRI.