[mkgmap-dev] searching for housenumbers

I don't really see why all the work on matching country/city to streets is necessary, as it should be enough if addresses via housenumbers that are present in OSM as such (containing all needed infos) would be good enough. Is there any knowledge on how house numbers are encoded in garmin maps or not? Once searching for housenumbers would be possible, I think it would not take too long til people enter that data. Searching for streets as streets could be reserved upon special calls in the style-file (e.g. for hiking trails or cycle routes).