Hello again.
I detail my process just to be sure i didn't make a big mistake

I'm trying to make a map of syria, so i download the asia.pbf file and the poly file

osmconvert --verbose syria\asia.osm.pbf -B=syria.poly --complex-ways --complete-ways -o=syria.osm

I didn't split the file because apparently it is not necessary.

I have installed Java 64 bits on a W7 64 machine

When i try to compile the map with :

java -ea -Xmx2048g -jar mkgmap.jar -c myargs.args map.osm

Where myargs are:

code-page=1256
family-name="MyMap"
country-name="SYRIA"
country-abbr="SY"
remove-short-arcs
make-poi-index
index
route
gmapsupp

I got this error:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: -28
        at uk.me.parabola.imgfmt.app.srt.Sort$SrtCollator$PositionIterator.next(Sort.java:468)
        at uk.me.parabola.imgfmt.app.srt.Sort$SrtCollator.compareOneStrength(Sort.java:396)
        at uk.me.parabola.imgfmt.app.srt.Sort$SrtCollator.compare(Sort.java:363)
        at uk.me.parabola.imgfmt.app.mdr.PrefixIndex.createFromList(PrefixIndex.java:73)
        at uk.me.parabola.imgfmt.app.mdr.PrefixIndex.createFromList(PrefixIndex.java:99)
        at uk.me.parabola.imgfmt.app.mdr.Mdr17.addPois(Mdr17.java:100)
        at uk.me.parabola.imgfmt.app.mdr.MDRFile.writeSections(MDRFile.java:301)
        at uk.me.parabola.imgfmt.app.mdr.MDRFile.write(MDRFile.java:258)
        at uk.me.parabola.mkgmap.combiners.MdrBuilder.onFinishForDevice(MdrBuilder.java:382)
        at uk.me.parabola.mkgmap.combiners.GmapsuppBuilder.onFinish(GmapsuppBuilder.java:154)
        at uk.me.parabola.mkgmap.main.Main.endOptions(Main.java:440)
        at uk.me.parabola.mkgmap.CommandArgsReader.readArgs(CommandArgsReader.java:126)
        at uk.me.parabola.mkgmap.main.Main.main(Main.java:114)

I want to have on my eTrex30 the searchable list of cities for example.

Hakim.