Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
Islands are named (on mapnik layer) if you use the place=island tag. Steve Chilton, Learning Support Fellow Manager of e-Learning Academic Development Centre for Learning and Quality Enhancement Middlesex University phone/fax: 020 8411 5355 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.mdx.ac.uk/schools/hssc/staff/profiles/technical/chiltons.asp Chair of the Society of Cartographers: http://www.soc.org.uk/ SoC conference 2008: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/cartographers08/ _ 2008/7/28 spaetz [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 02:21:05PM +0200, Jochen Topf wrote: The biggest problem around place names is currently that there are only a few levels for places: city, town, village, hamlet and suburb. And there is no way to mark capitals. As well as capitals, I'd really like to see islands named. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 4:09 PM, Tom Hughes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Erik Johansson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Can mapnik automatically render names for smaller towns in lower zoom levels if there is room for the labels? Or should we have a mapnik_zoom_level=6 tag? This is a problem for the country side were you have lots of room to render names, but not that many big names to render. (Especially Sweden[1]) Tagging for rendered == Evil! Mapnik will render whatever it is told to, and will drop things if there isn't enough room. Getting people to hand optimize personalized rendered maps is probably easier than getting them to do their own surveys. This is were Openstreetmap becomes Wikipedia, and a very subjective experience. With the current system people hand optimize the place=* and highway=* classing to make maps look good. People who think this is only a data collection project need to get out more (oh the irony :-). What is better to recognize that there is a difference between what is there and what is mapped. Or just hoping that a collectively made map will be easy to render automagically without people hand optimizing for the rendering rules? Currently our rules are not very good about the order in which they render things, which means that the wrongs things can get dropped. That should probably fixed before we start rendering more things at low zoom levels. http://openstreetmap.org/?lat=66.5lon=13.2zoom=5layers=B00FTF No roads, no hamlet names, and no lakes for that matter. This is how it is out side densely populated areas, that means Scandinavia, Argentina. etc.. I'm not sure if it would help to change the zoom level of this [1]: Rule Filter[place] = 'village' or [place] = 'suburb'/Filter MaxScaleDenominator5/MaxScaleDenominator[] /Rule If there was an openstreetmap style editor[2] that included more rural parts, perhaps that's what Inge needs. [1]http://trac.openstreetmap.org/browser/applications/rendering/mapnik/osm.xml?format=txt [2] Doesn't seem to work atm: http://tile.openstreetmap.nl/~panman/styledit/ -- /emj ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:44 AM, Inge Wallin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * Names! There are far too few names on the map, especially on low zoom levels. It's difficult to get a feeling for where you are and orient yourself on the map if you cannot find names on the map. The commercial maps show lots and lots of names, and that is a good thing. We should make names appear on the maps earlier. Can mapnik automatically render names for smaller towns in lower zoom levels if there is room for the labels? Or should we have a mapnik_zoom_level=6 tag? This is a problem for the country side were you have lots of room to render names, but not that many big names to render. (Especially Sweden[1]) I could only find one ticket related to this: http://trac.openstreetmap.org/ticket/696 [1] Germany 230 hab/km^2 Sweden 21hab/km^2, but a large part of the country side is more in the 6-10 hab/km^2 range.. Maybe why people buy vacation houses here. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED] Erik Johansson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:44 AM, Inge Wallin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * Names! There are far too few names on the map, especially on low zoom levels. It's difficult to get a feeling for where you are and orient yourself on the map if you cannot find names on the map. The commercial maps show lots and lots of names, and that is a good thing. We should make names appear on the maps earlier. Can mapnik automatically render names for smaller towns in lower zoom levels if there is room for the labels? Or should we have a mapnik_zoom_level=6 tag? This is a problem for the country side were you have lots of room to render names, but not that many big names to render. (Especially Sweden[1]) Tagging for rendered == Evil! Mapnik will render whatever it is told to, and will drop things if there isn't enough room. Currently our rules are not very good about the order in which they render things, which means that the wrongs things can get dropped. That should probably fixed before we start rendering more things at low zoom levels. Tom -- Tom Hughes ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
[OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
This is a mail that I have been wanting to send for some time, but wanted to think a little more about the subject before I actually did. The topic is how the maps of OpenStreetMap are actually used by ordinary users. I know that the data of OSM is supposed to be used in new exciting ways like the cycle maps, but the majority of the users are just going to use what the programmers have made available to them. So the question then becomes, is the current renderings good? For which purposes? Before we can discuss how good the maps are, we have to describe the intended use cases. I will start with my own here, and hope that you will fill in your own ways of using maps in general and OSM in particular. I recently bought a cheap navigator, but before that I often used a commercial Swedish map services to navigate to places when I went there for my work. I'd print out the map on paper on a low zoom level, showing where I would go on large roads. Then I'd print out maps using higher and higher zoom levels closer and closer to my goal so that I can see which intermediate and smaller roads that I'd have to take to reach my goal. So, would OSM work for that usecase? No, I don't think so. Here is why: * Names! There are far too few names on the map, especially on low zoom levels. It's difficult to get a feeling for where you are and orient yourself on the map if you cannot find names on the map. The commercial maps show lots and lots of names, and that is a good thing. We should make names appear on the maps earlier. * Distinctions between roads. In opposition to the case for names, there are too many roads on the large scale maps. Here is what the current map looks like around my home city: http://www.openstreetmap.com/?lat=58.33lon=15.408zoom=10layers=0B0FTF There is too little distinction between the motorway, the few primary highways and the secondary. I don't think the tertiary highways should even be on that map. Once they are all mapped they will provide a messy background making the important roads even more difficult to see. * Marking important roads. In the map above, you can also see that there is no marking of even the motorway (E4) or primary roads (in this case national roads 34 and 50). This is like names for cities, towns and villages: it makes it more difficult to follow where you are on the map. So, what are other use cases for OSM? Are the current OSM renderings good for those use cases? Do we need more different renderings for different use cases? I think that OSM has reached a state of maturity where we need to start discussing how the default renderings are used in real life. -Inge ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
On 28/07/2008 10:44, Inge Wallin wrote: So the question then becomes, is the current renderings good? For which purposes? Everyone will have their own desires and requirements. To achieve what people want, I think easy configurability is what is needed. Pre-rendered map tiles make that hard, but doing it live is extremely demanding. David ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
Hi, So, what are other use cases for OSM? Are the current OSM renderings good for those use cases? Do we need more different renderings for different use cases? We are not a map rendering project. We are a Geodata collection project. The fact that we have maps at all is more or less to show off what you can do with our data (plus, perhaps, as a feedback/debugging tool for our users); we do not aim to cater to every end-user's need with the pre-made maps we offer. If anything, we should aim to make it easy for other people to create suitable maps for whatever community they are in. I.e. we should not change our maps to make them suitable for your purpose, but we should enable YOU to create maps that are suitable for your purpose and others with the same requirements. We could waste an enormous amount of time trying to discuss which kinds of default maps we should offer and how they should be styled, and we'll probably never reach results. I hope that, in the long run, OpenStreetMap will *not* offer *any* maps, just map data from which loads and loads of third parties create whatever maps they need. Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
Inge Wallin wrote: * Distinctions between roads. In opposition to the case for names, there are too many roads on the large scale maps. Here is what the current map looks like around my home city: http://www.openstreetmap.com/?lat=58.33lon=15.408zoom=10layers=0B0FTF There is too little distinction between the motorway, the few primary highways and the secondary. I don't think the tertiary highways should even be on that map. Once they are all mapped they will provide a messy background making the important roads even more difficult to see. Some interesting points. We are, in a way, a victim of our own success: the balance on the maps looked absolutely perfect about six months ago. Now that we have many more roads, some zoom levels can look a bit different - and it may be time to remove highway=tertiary from z10 on Mapnik, for example. (Personally I think it'd be better if people just used highway=tertiary less but I may be in a minority on that one. ;) ) That said, usable clear maps is not the only metric we should work by. Showing off our coverage and completeness is another one - indeed, if you follow Frederik's argument (which I have a lot of sympathy with), you could argue that it's the main one. So it could sometimes be considered useful to have a slightly more cluttered map than would otherwise be the case, simply to show off how much stuff we have - and, in other areas, how far we have to go. I know very little about the Osmarender layer, but certainly, Steve Chilton revises the Mapnik layer constantly: http://trac.openstreetmap.org/log/applications/rendering/mapnik/osm.xml and I'm sure would be receptive to suggestions. Bear in mind, of course, that there are certain technical issues with all the renderers - label placement is the bugbear for any automated cartography. On a related issue, I think you underestimate the usefulness of the alternative maps with this: The topic is how the maps of OpenStreetMap are actually used by ordinary users. I know that the data of OSM is supposed to be used in new exciting ways like the cycle maps, but the majority of the users are just going to use what the programmers have made available to them. I don't use OSM for planning car trips. It's not quite good enough in the UK[1]: the usability isn't sufficiently better than Google Maps, and the completeness isn't there, yet. But I _do_ use OSM for cycling, because there, our map is streets ahead of anything else available. There is no better map of the (UK) National Cycle Network, full stop. Ok, ours isn't complete for all areas, but it is for many; the site is fast; the data's accurate; you can put it on a GPS. This isn't true of any other NCN map. And unlike the car trips, you can't use the NCN without a map: I could find my way from Charlbury to, I dunno, Llanwrtyd Wells by car without a map - road signs take care of that - but Charlbury to nearby Banbury on the NCN is really hard unless you have a map, because the signs are erratic. This isn't just my opinion. It's quite telling that if you look on the UK roadgeek site, www.sabre-roads.org.uk (dominated by motorists), they don't quite get OSM: they just whinge about lack of completeness. But the cyclists love it - I've seen very positive reviews on uk.rec.cycling, forums.ctc.org.uk, sustransrangers.org.uk. Right now, the majority of the users for whom OSM is _the_ _best_ _map_ _available_ are exactly those who are using the new and exciting layers. cheers Richard [1] This argument is quite different in the Netherlands, of course! ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
Hi, It's quite telling that if you look on the UK roadgeek site, www.sabre-roads.org.uk (dominated by motorists), they don't quite get OSM: they just whinge about lack of completeness. Same here with pocketnavigation.de... Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail [EMAIL PROTECTED] ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 12:16:53PM +0200, Frederik Ramm wrote: [...] change our maps to make them suitable for your purpose, but we should enable YOU to create maps that are suitable for your purpose and others with the same requirements. Yes, we should. So lets see about the things Inge mentioned... On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:44:35AM +0200, Inge Wallin wrote: So the question then becomes, is the current renderings good? For which purposes? Unfortunately there are many different reasons why the rendering is sub-optimal. Your three examples show three different reasons for why this can happen: * Names! There are far too few names on the map, especially on low zoom levels. It's difficult to get a feeling for where you are and orient yourself [...] The biggest problem around place names is currently that there are only a few levels for places: city, town, village, hamlet and suburb. And there is no way to mark capitals. So you always seem to have too few or too many place names. We need more finegrained control here, for instance by tagging places with population numbers. OSM needs: Tagging schema for more details on place names. You then need: Updated mapping scheme to use those. * Distinctions between roads. [...] See Freds comment. Depending on your goal you can already do that in your own map any way you like. OSM needs: Nothing. You need: Change your mapping scheme. * Marking important roads. [...] Probably missing data. And difficult to render well. More experimenting and improvement of renderer software needed. OSM needs: More data. Better rendering software. You need: To make use of that once its available. Jochen -- Jochen Topf [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.remote.org/jochen/ +49-721-388298 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 02:21:05PM +0200, Jochen Topf wrote: The biggest problem around place names is currently that there are only a few levels for places: city, town, village, hamlet and suburb. And there is no way to mark capitals. There is always population=20, etc which can help you to find the biggest ones. And what prevents us from adding capital=yes to those cities? I don't think that the tagging is insufficient today. OK there might be a more subjective important city tag, and there are problems with suburbs and all that. But I don't see that point as a big problem. [skipped lots of good stuff] spaetz ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
2008/7/28 spaetz [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 02:21:05PM +0200, Jochen Topf wrote: The biggest problem around place names is currently that there are only a few levels for places: city, town, village, hamlet and suburb. And there is no way to mark capitals. There is always population=20, etc which can help you to find the biggest ones. And what prevents us from adding capital=yes to those cities? I don't think that the tagging is insufficient today. OK there might be a more subjective important city tag, and there are problems with suburbs and all that. But I don't see that point as a big problem. I would say having population = associate with towns/suburbs etc should drastically help with the ability to render names at appropriate zoom levels. Is there any way to do clever work regarding the number of major roads in the facinity? As that could help to indicate the seniority of a locality. As well as capitals, I'd really like to see islands named. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 02:48:15PM +0200, spaetz wrote: On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 02:21:05PM +0200, Jochen Topf wrote: The biggest problem around place names is currently that there are only a few levels for places: city, town, village, hamlet and suburb. And there is no way to mark capitals. There is always population=20, etc which can help you to find the biggest ones. And what prevents us from adding capital=yes to those cities? I don't think that the tagging is insufficient today. OK there might be a more subjective important city tag, and there are problems with suburbs and all that. But I don't see that point as a big problem. I find 207 000 places in Europe and only 57 000 population tags. Actually better than I thought. Probably from some import. But from the 1044 cities only 297 have such a tag. So there still is some work to do before this can be used in the renderer. I can't find a capital tag on MapFeatures. And its not enough anyway, because we need the different levels. Not very difficult to do, but somebody has to write that up and people have to tag the data before it can be rendered. So, yes, in the grand scheme of things, this problem is a small problem, but for the labelling of place names some more work has to be done on it. Jochen -- Jochen Topf [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.remote.org/jochen/ +49-721-388298 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
2008/7/28 Jochen Topf [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 02:48:15PM +0200, spaetz wrote: On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 02:21:05PM +0200, Jochen Topf wrote: The biggest problem around place names is currently that there are only a few levels for places: city, town, village, hamlet and suburb. And there is no way to mark capitals. There is always population=20, etc which can help you to find the biggest ones. And what prevents us from adding capital=yes to those cities? I don't think that the tagging is insufficient today. OK there might be a more subjective important city tag, and there are problems with suburbs and all that. But I don't see that point as a big problem. I find 207 000 places in Europe and only 57 000 population tags. Actually better than I thought. Probably from some import. But from the 1044 cities only 297 have such a tag. So there still is some work to do before this can be used in the renderer. I can't find a capital tag on MapFeatures. And its not enough anyway, because we need the different levels. Not very difficult to do, but somebody has to write that up and people have to tag the data before it can be rendered. So, yes, in the grand scheme of things, this problem is a small problem, but for the labelling of place names some more work has to be done on it. One would think that getting all of the capitals tagged would be easy, however going and grabbing it from sites linked to google I'm assuming would almost certainly be a no no. Can we use information from wikipedia? For example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_capitals If I can use that, then I can find all the capitals, and just tag them. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
Hi, * The Logo in the upper left of openstreetmap.org said The Free Wiki World Map (not Geodata Collection). * The first sentence of the text under the logo said OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world., not ...is a free collection of geo data It's easy to get fooled from that, you know. ;-) Yes, it should be clarified, but then how does one do that whithout sounding like an academic? Two things. First: YES, please make it easier to create suitable adapted maps. Second: My point wasn't to make it perfect for *me*, but to make the default maps more usable for its intended purpose. That purpose is not stated anywhere -- that I could find. So you made some assumptions about the intended purpose, and I tried to tell you that what you believe to be the intended purpose is not what I believe to be the intended purpose. Richard Fairhurst wrote in another mail that Showing off our coverage and completeness is another use of the default map. That's a very good purpose, but it doesn't conflict with making it more usable for normal people. And what a conflict it is. A standard Mapnik tile on zoom level 4 doesn't show anything we have in our database. Which makes a lot of sense for the user of such a map - he will usually want to zoom in to his area of interest. However for demonstrating our completeness/coverage, it's useless. Same for lots of other features, e.g. forest; if you want to show how much data we have, you usually bring them in at much coarser zooms, while for actually using the map for navigation or route planning it should be less cluttered. so the idea with the current maps could even be to make them more difficult to use in real life. I can understand that, but in that case it should perhaps be explained somewhere. I think we are too busy with enough other things to have time to actively pursue the creation of un-usable maps. There was a presentation of squirming, moving, pulsating maps at last year's SOTM which I sorely missed this year, maybe that could be said to be difficult to use... but I'd trade them for some engineered stuff any time ;-) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail [EMAIL PROTECTED] ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
One would think that getting all of the capitals tagged would be easy, however going and grabbing it from sites linked to google I'm assuming would almost certainly be a no no. Can we use information from wikipedia? For example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_capitals If I can use that, then I can find all the capitals, and just tag them. How about geonames database - is that usable? A quick scan shows 142,000 locations with population data (accuracy unknown!). There are also feature codes to define which locations are major cities, etc. country_code | ansiname | latitude | longitude | population | feature_code --+-+--+--++-- GB | Abbotts Ann | 51.18300 | -1.51700 | 2112 | PPL GB | Aberaeron | 52.25000 | -4.25000 | 1537 | PPLA GB | Abercanaid | 51.723611100 | -3.36600 | 5061 | PPL GB | Abercarn| 51.64700 | -3.136944400 | 10118 | PPL GB | Aberchirder | 57.55000 | -2.61700 | 1159 | PPL GB | Aberdare| 51.71500 | -3.454166700 | 32756 | PPL GB | Aberdeen| 57.13300 | -2.1 | 183790 | PPLA GB | Aberdour| 56.05000 | -3.3 | 1742 | PPL GB | Aberfeldy | 56.61700 | -3.85000 | 1937 | PPL GB | Aberfoyle | 56.18300 | -4.38300 |577 | PPL -- Brian ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
spaetz schrieb: There is always population=20, etc which can help you to find the biggest ones. And what prevents us from adding capital=yes to those cities? I don't think that the tagging is insufficient today. OK there might be a more subjective important city tag, and there are problems with suburbs and all that. But I don't see that point as a big problem. IMHO the cleanest way to determine capitals is to look which role a city has in the country/state/county-relation: http://openstreetmap.org/browse/relation/16162 regards, Sven ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
Brian Quinion wrote: One would think that getting all of the capitals tagged would be easy, however going and grabbing it from sites linked to google I'm assuming would almost certainly be a no no. Can we use information from wikipedia? For example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_capitals If I can use that, then I can find all the capitals, and just tag them. How about geonames database - is that usable? We cannot use data from geonames as the data is derived from Google Maps. http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2007-May/014038.html http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Geonames Shaun ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_capitals If I can use that, then I can find all the capitals, and just tag them. How about geonames database - is that usable? We cannot use data from geonames as the data is derived from Google Maps. http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2007-May/014038.html http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Geonames Sorry - let me me more precise. I was referring to the original us goverment database of the same name: http://geonames.nga.mil/ggmagaz/geonames4.asp http://geonames.nga.mil/ggmagaz/detaillinksearch.asp?G_NAME=%2732FA881891803774E0440003BA962ED3%27Diacritics=DC My understanding as that all US data of this type is in the public domain. -- Brian ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Actually using OpenStreetMap and the usability of the current maps
Jochen Topf wrote: I find 207 000 places in Europe and only 57 000 population tags. I've just done my bit by adding a population tag to Guildford. Only 149,999 places to go -- Jonathan (Jonobennett) ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
