Re: [OSM-talk] 68 GPS units donated to OSM

2009-01-15 Thread Gervase Markham
Etienne Cherdlu wrote:
 They are physically in London.  Gekos don't weigh much, it should be
 feasible to ship them wherever they would be most useful.

Why not give a set for loaning out to the first ten of the new chapters
you are setting up?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] NPE maps broken?

2009-01-14 Thread Gervase Markham
Thomas Wood wrote:
 I believe the old WMSplugin used to send coordinates in OSGB36 rather
 than WGS84?
 This seems to be what the server side code expects, at least.

Who is responsible for the WMSplugin? Is this a permanent change, i.e.
do all WMS servers need updating?

Who runs the NPE maps server? Nick Black? Another Nick?

I can't understand the WMS spec. Who is right?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] OSM and Linked Data, and W3C, etc ...

2009-01-13 Thread Gervase Markham
Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
 From outside it looks as though the OSM XML format and API are
 developing in the OSM community in a reasonable way.  What sort of help
 do you think OSM will need? Money to run servers if the load increases?

I think that's a current, rather than a future need :-)

  An existing standards org with facilities and process for the API and
 the XML format? What was it you had in mind?

I would like to see some gentle persuasion applied and arguments
deployed in favour of a slightly more normative tagging schema than we
currently have. As you and the W3C have a great deal of expertise in the
area of the semantic web, you probably know how to best express the
truth I feel in my gut :-)

My deep concern is that OSM's data set will always be missing its full
potential because it's not consistent enough, when it could have been
more consistent with no more work if those doing the data entry had had
better guidance.

The Presets feature in JOSM is a good step forward, of course.

Gerv


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[OSM-talk] NPE maps broken?

2009-01-13 Thread Gervase Markham
http://nick.dev.openstreetmap.org/openpaths/freemap.php?layers=npebbox=-2.5703500,54.4446860,-2.5119329,54.5031031width=500height=500

(This URL was copied and pasted out of an error message spat out by the
latest JOSM.)

Warning: Division by zero in /var/www/nick/freemap/Map.php on line 15


It then produces a couple of other errors and spits out the PNG data,
but Firefox says it's been sent as text/html - and, of course, the extra
text will confuse the image decoder.

Even if JOSM is requesting the wrong thing, a division by zero is bad.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] fosdem

2009-01-12 Thread Gervase Markham
John Levin wrote:
 Is anyone on this list going to Fosdem? Will there be any OSM workshops 
 or talks there?

I'm going, but I don't know of any OSM things. I'll be too busy doing
Mozilla things :-)

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] OSM on Garmin - raster tiles?

2009-01-08 Thread Gervase Markham
Dermot McNally wrote:
 2009/1/6 Gervase Markham gerv-gm...@gerv.net:
 
 But it's still fairly ugly :-)
 
 As ugly as upside-down labels? To avoid those (if you will allow track
 up mode)

I'm quite happy to have north up, just like I get in my web browser :-)

Gerv


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[OSM-talk] OSM on Garmin - raster tiles?

2009-01-06 Thread Gervase Markham
When I heard about the possibility of OSM on Garmin, I imagined
something like the Mapnik Slippy Map on my GPS screen. Now I have a
Legend HCx, it turns out that I get the Garmin vector rendering with OSM
data behind it. This is clearly much better than nothing, but does the
gmapsupp.img format support stuffing in a load of raster tiles, or is it
vector data only? (Obviously, you'd lose the ability to route with raster.)

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] OSM on Garmin - raster tiles?

2009-01-06 Thread Gervase Markham
Igor Brejc wrote:
 IMHO converting OSM vector data into raster images and then showing them 
 on a Garmin unit would mean losing a lot of quality and speed, not to 
 mention how much more memory card space such maps would consume.

Could be. But they'd look a heck of a lot nicer, and have useful POIs on
them. (Perhaps I could get better POIs by working out how to tweak the
current compilation process...)

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] OSM on Garmin - raster tiles?

2009-01-06 Thread Gervase Markham
Igor Brejc wrote:
 What kind of a problem are you having with POIs? What do you mean by 
 useful? I'm wondering because I'm working right now on POIs for 
 GroundTruth.

Actually, it's not as bad as I thought. They didn't show on the zoom
level I was using, and some I expected to be there aren't actually in
the data yet.

But it's still fairly ugly :-)

Gerv


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[OSM-talk] Postcode tag

2009-01-05 Thread Gervase Markham
What's the tag for the postcode of something? I'd assume postcode= but
tagwatch seems to say there's only one instance of that in the whole UK.
Map Features is no help. addr:postcode?

Gerv


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[OSM-talk] Garmin Legend HCx and Linux

2008-12-28 Thread Gervase Markham
I asked for a Garmin Legend HCx for Christmas, on the recommendation of
various people in this group, and am now trying to connect it to my
Linux computer to do some real-time mapping. Has anyone got this device
working with gpsd? A bit of Googling and other work doesn't turn up
anything - some say to use the garmin_gps kernel module, others say it's
unreliable (and, in fact, it is blacklisted in my Ubuntu 8.10).

Has anyone managed this?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Garmin Legend HCx and Linux

2008-12-28 Thread Gervase Markham
Simon Ward wrote:
 AFAIK you need to use the garmin_gps module for gpsd.  It provides the
 requisite USB‐serial devices, /dev/ttyUSBN.

Yeah, I've tried that, but using it just locks up the port and a reboot
is required to free it up again. I've now found other reports of this
sort of thing; see comment #9 here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=914706

Has anyone got garmin_gps working specifically with Ubuntu 8.10 and/or
the Legend HCx?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Garmin Legend HCx and Linux

2008-12-28 Thread Gervase Markham
DavidD wrote:
 What kernel version are you using? garmin_usb stopped working for me
 somewhere between 2.6.25 and 2.6.27.

2.6.27-9. :-(

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Edit war on the wiki map features

2008-12-05 Thread Gervase Markham
Richard Fairhurst wrote:
 Sure it does.
 
 if access==no or access==false then allowed=no else allowed=yes

So basically, you have to decide that all unknown values default to
either one or the other.

If I'm a renderer, and I come across bicycle=difficult, and I only know
about no and yes, which one do I assume?

IMO, at the very least, people who wish to extend existing tags in this
way need to update the tag description page to say what the default is
in the case of an unknown value.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Edit war on the wiki map features

2008-12-05 Thread Gervase Markham
Frederik Ramm wrote:
 Without commenting on the rest of the discussion: Surely you (the 
 renderer) must draw such an object as if there were no bicycle tag at 
 all, whatever that means for you.

But that doesn't work, does it?

Say I'm a general purpose renderer who shows access. I understand
bicycle=no and bicycle=yes, and show them accordingly. Now, instead
of someone coming along with a new tag for their info, they extend
bicycle and do bicycle=difficult. My code hits it. If I've defensively
programmed my code, it'll do one of:

if (bicycle=yes) {
  Do A
}
else {
  Do B
}

or, alternatively,

if (bicycle=no) {
  Do B
}
else {
  Do A
}

Which should I have done? That's the question I'm saying that anyone who
wants to extend a formerly binary tag with new values needs to provide
an answer to before they start using the new values.

Say I assume bicycle=no for unknown values, as you suggest. That means
that bicycle-accessible bits, formerly rendered on my map, would
suddenly drop off entirely because someone decided to get more specific.
So in this case, an assumption of yes might make more sense. But it
might not in every case.

My point is that (leaving aside the specific bicycle example) extending
already-used tags in this way is going to result in confused renderers
and undefined and renderer-specific behaviour.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Edit war on the wiki map features

2008-12-03 Thread Gervase Markham
Richard Fairhurst wrote:
 bicycle=no|yes|difficult|unsuitable

The trouble with that sort of thing, as compared to (ignore the actual
tag names, they are just to give an idea):

bicycle=yes
bicycle:surface=poor

(i.e. splitting out access from quality) is that the former scheme
doesn't have fallback - i.e. renderers have to know about all possible
values anyone could invent, whereas the latter scheme has a simple
version for most maps and then cycling-specific maps can bother with the
extra complexity.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Unification of OpenStreetBugs an Trac

2008-12-03 Thread Gervase Markham
Richard Fairhurst wrote:
 Even when we do use something that wasn't invented here, the best fits are
 those which were at least partially developed with OSM in mind - from Mapnik
 to the ODbL. TBH I wouldn't have even considered this application as a
 bug-tracker had the comparison not been made on the mailing list.

Inventing your own stuff makes perfect sense in the area of your core
competency. So OSM rolling its own mapping software is entirely
reasonable. However, OSM doesn't have a core competency in wikis (so we
use MediaWiki), source code management (so we use SVN) or bug trackers
(so we use Trac).

I agree that where the bug tracker starts being used for mapping-related
things, then the boundaries start to blur. But I'd still suggest that
the only difference between an OSB ticket and a software bug ticket
is the method of submission. After that, it's triaged and managed in the
same sort of way.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Google Maps - OSM comparison

2008-12-03 Thread Gervase Markham
David Earl wrote:
 There's have to be some indication that's what was wanted IMO.

I'm pretty sure Google Maps does this by default.

 Also, though I'm sure it is possible, and I could use optimizations of 
 various kinds, ordering by great circle distance (which you'd need to do 
 for this) is quite a lot more compute intensive in the ordering than the 
 local linear distances I'm using to order by when you qualify by place 
 (Bahnhofstrasse in Munich).

I'm sure an approximation would be permissible :-)

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Edit war on the wiki map features

2008-12-01 Thread Gervase Markham
Frederik Ramm wrote:
 Gervase Markham wrote:
 Most of all since we're growing exponentially and even if we had 90% of 
 mappers agree on something today, in two or three months those 90% would 
 perhaps only form 30% of the community...
 This is actually an argument _for_ Map_Features and some sort of
 meritocracy, not against.
 
 It was intended as an argument *against* binding votes. Anything that is 
 carried by a (even vast!) majority today might be a minority opinion a 
 few months later.

But all of those new people generally have far less mapping, OSM and
tagging experience than the older people. Which means that if you don't
have some sort of binding (or at least, highly recommended) set of tags
created by those with more experience, different people will make the
same newbie mistakes over and over again when it comes to thinking up tags.

Lots of other projects (e.g. Wikipedia) have a regular flux of
newcomers. They don't seem to think that this stops them making policy,
or having experienced people making decisions about style or the way of
doing things and then having them enforced. The pseudo-egalitarianism of
the opinion of everyone who is involved has equal weight is a recipe
for either deadlock or anarchy. No project - commercial or volunteer,
large or small - runs itself that way.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Edit war on the wiki map features

2008-11-30 Thread Gervase Markham
Frederik Ramm wrote:
 Most of all since we're growing exponentially and even if we had 90% of 
 mappers agree on something today, in two or three months those 90% would 
 perhaps only form 30% of the community...

This is actually an argument _for_ Map_Features and some sort of
meritocracy, not against.

In order to know which sort of tagging schemes work well and which
don't, the biggest thing you need is experience. If you don't have that,
and if you aren't given guidance, you are likely to tag in dumb ways.
And, as we are expanding so fast, the experienced will always be
outnumbered by the inexperienced. Which means that, without guidance,
most tagging will be not as good as it could be.

Having experienced people in leadership, and actually doing some leading
and making decisions, is something that most groups consider an asset,
not something to be avoided. I continue to be amazed that OpenStreetMap
is so allergic to it - at least in the area of tagging.

No-one is suggesting forbidding people from tagging however they like.
But you can tag any way you like is not the same as all tagging
schemes are equally sensible or we should make data consumers and
renderers support six different ways of doing everything if they want to
render the whole world.

(Exactly how one would get to the stage of having appropriately-chosen
decision-makers is a different question, of course. But route is not the
same thing as destination.)

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Unification of OpenStreetBugs an Trac

2008-11-30 Thread Gervase Markham
Marc Schütz wrote:
 Bugzilla as a backend would certainly be nice, but as a frontend it is 
 obviously inappropriate. I don't know whether Bugzilla supports alternate 
 frontends; if so, it could be worthwhile building one that fits our needs.

Modern Bugzillas have an XML-RPC interface, and also entirely
customisable templates. Having OSB automatically create Bugzilla tickets
is a simple matter of programming :-)

Gerv
(Bugzilla hacker, willing to help)


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Re: [OSM-talk] Google Maps - OSM comparison

2008-11-30 Thread Gervase Markham
David Earl wrote:
 However, if we start applying similar techniques to state captials or 
 other hierarchies, a search inferred from a loose syntax will not be 
 enough and I need to provide a more formal way for mechanical clients to 
 constrain their searches. As it stands city is ambiguous - it is both 
 a category and part of some names (to wit, Mexico City).

One hint it doesn't seem to use is the current viewport. If I'm viewing
London, I probably want places in London sorted to the top, as opposed
to placed in Scotland or places in the USA.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Hierarchy of places search results

2008-11-30 Thread Gervase Markham
Tom Chance wrote:

 Search 3 - Show pinpoints for the results on the map, so at least you can
 quickly discard all those results from the wrong side of the globe.

Search 4 - use the current viewport as a hint.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Unification of OpenStreetBugs an Trac

2008-11-30 Thread Gervase Markham
Richard Fairhurst wrote:
 I'm not sure why the need to reuse existing software at all. Bugtracking is
 the sort of thing you expect to find in 'Rails For Dummies' as My First
 Rails App - if you’ve got a decent framework it’s pretty elementary.

As someone who's spent the last nine years working on one, and seen
several putative competitors arrive and fade (Scarab, anyone?), I'd
dispute that. You can do simple things simply, yes, but you always find
you have more requirements than you think.

Gerv


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[OSM-talk] Markers on the slippy map

2008-11-09 Thread Gervase Markham
According to:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Browsing#Adding_a_Marker
this URL:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=51.64685mlon=-0.14641zoom=15layers=B000FFF
should have a marker in the middle, but it doesn't. Am I doing something
wrong, or is something broken?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Markers on the slippy map

2008-11-09 Thread Gervase Markham
Ulf Lamping wrote:
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=51.64685mlon=-0.14641zoom=15
 
 Could you update the wiki?

Ah, I see, you have to remove the layers attribute.

Wiki updated.

But then how would you get a marker on the Osmarender layer?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Markers on the slippy map

2008-11-09 Thread Gervase Markham
Shaun McDonald wrote:
 Just go to the osmarender layer (or whichever layer you want), hit
 permalink, then with the url that you get change the lat to mlat and lon
 to mlon.

I'm confused. The layers parameter doesn't define which layer is shown?

How would I send the URL of a marked Osmarender map to someone, if the
URL is the same as that for a marked Mapnik map?

Sorry if I'm missing something obvious...

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] lanes

2008-10-13 Thread Gervase Markham
Ed Loach wrote:
 At a risk of re-opening a discussion, what is the unresolved issue
 of handedness? Surely if you can have oneway=yes in the direction of
 the arrows and oneway=-1 for oneway in the opposite direction of the
 arrows, then left and right can also be defined relative to the
 direction of the way. 

Yes, they are. That's the point.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Left and Right - a proposal

2008-10-13 Thread Gervase Markham
Stephen Gower wrote:
 I see from later posts that you also suggest using this scheme for cycle/bus
 lanes to indicate which side of the road they should be rendered.  

Did I?

 This
 highlighted to me a general problem with the scheme. For rendering the
 scheme is perfect - drawing a bus stop or a cycle lane on one side of a road
 is exactly what is needed.  However, for routing you need to know which
 direction a bike may travel along a cycle lane, or which direction buses
 from a stop will be heading.  To derive a travelling direction from the
 Left/Right terms a routing engine is usually going to need to know the local
 rule of the road - do we just leave this to the routing engine to factor
 in (needing to work out where in the world it is), or is there another
 simple solution I've missed.

Surely the routing engine needs to know this already, for example to
take you up or down the correct ramp at a motorway interchange?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] lanes

2008-10-12 Thread Gervase Markham
LeedsTracker wrote:
 As Shaun says, the unresolved issue of lane handed-ness seems to be
 blocking this lane issue.

This is anothe occasion where a generic :left/:right proposal would be
useful...

/plug

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] lanes

2008-10-12 Thread Gervase Markham
graham wrote:
 - Say I have a bus lane (or cycle lane) running along one side of a 
 two-way road (the most common situation where I am).   Just attaching a 
 'left' tag to it makes it dependent on nobody ever reversing the 
 arbitrary direction attached to the way. 

No, it doesn't, because editors would make flipping the left/right part
of the reverse way command, just as they now flip oneways and so on.
There are various consistency checks editors need to do when making
changes - this is just another one.

 - More serious, I think: it just feels quite arbitrary as a solution: I 
 would have to tag a lane as being 'left' in relation to the random 
 direction the arrows on the way happen to be pointing, rather than in 
 relation to anything in the real world.

How else do you unambiguously intrinsically define the side of a way?
Unless it's a closed way, where you have inside and outside, the
only way is to give it a direction (which it has) and say right or
left.

You can define it extrinsically using things like north or west but
that runs into problems with roads which curve, or even run in a circle.

 2. have an 'origin' tag to be used on the first node of a way 
 independent of direction; if the way direction flipped, the origin would 
 stay in place. 'Left' or 'right' would be in relation to the origin 
 node. Still completely arbitrary where the origin goes, and how do you 
 find it on a long way?

If my proposal has disadvantages, then this has them all but adds some
new ones too :-)

 3. Make more of a separation between internal representation of ways and 
 user views in josm/potlatch. All ways have a direction which is 
 independent of the 'arrowed' direction which can be displayed to users, 
 and is fixed - a totally arbitrary value used only as a fixed reference. 

Why? Why not just use the arrowed direction? After all, it's not exactly
complicated to flip tags when you change the direction of the way.
That's why the scheme is generic :left and :right - so it can be used on
any tags.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] US local government data: negotiating license?

2008-10-06 Thread Gervase Markham
Mike Collinson wrote:
 A good general method is to flip things around, explain what you are
 going to do with the data and ask them to contact you by, say, the
 end of the month if the use does NOT meet their terms of use.  

I think that is both politically and legally extremely unwise. You can't
write to Sony and say unless you contact me in the next month, I'm
going to make your entire back catalogue available via BitTorrent.
While a more extreme example, the same principle applies. Their lack of
refusal cannot be taken as consent.

 After , the trail data will be merged into a global public
 database called OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap is a non-commercial
 project

No, it's not - or, at least, to claim this is to suggest that the data
is only used non-commercially, which is definitely wrong.

Gerv

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Re: [OSM-talk] Proposed feature for noname

2008-09-21 Thread Gervase Markham
Christoph Böhme wrote:
 The other solutions made so far essentially suggest to add a negative
 image of the world to the database: Not only saying what is there but
 also what is not. Consequently this would mean to tag streets not
 only with the features they have but also with oneway:absent=yes,
 cyclelane:absent=yes and so on to indicate that someone has checked
 that a feature is definitely not there. 

That just doesn't follow at all.

You are claiming that having a tag for no name is a slippery slope
which leads to a tag for no special lane for tractors or whatever. Why
should that be? I don't think the slope is slippery at all.

Names are unusual in this regard because there are certain classes of
things which one expects to have them (such as roads) and, because of
our mapping techniques using satellite tracing, there are often cases
where roads are in but the names are not. Therefore, distinguishing
between definitely no name and name not discovered yet is
particularly important as a step towards completing the map without
different people repeatedly visiting roads which turn out to definitely
have no name.

So having a noname=yes (or whatever - the syntax is unimportant for
this discussion) absolutely does not mean you need a nopostbox=yes or
a notractorlane=yes tag.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] NoName

2008-09-17 Thread Gervase Markham
Shaun McDonald wrote:
 It should be also noted that the nonames map is to be used as a tool to
 know where there is some mapping effort to run mapping parties should be
 placed, rather than a definitive no road should be red.

Why not? That sounds like an excellent use for it, if we can just agree
a tag.

name:absent=yes, which was just proposed above, also seems good to me.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Open Database Licence

2008-09-17 Thread Gervase Markham
Michael Collinson wrote:
 Jordan has done great work but as he is connected with the drafting 
 itself for a more general audience, we also need that second pair of 
 eyes  as a completely independent review done from the perspective 
 of OSM/OSMF only. That has fallen through ... things move slowly in 
 the legal world when you don't have much money :-(.  I'll post an 
 update as soon as I hear anything.

What happened to the idea suggested at SOTM to offer the Isle of Man
data to Google under the new licence? That would mean their lawyers
would need to look over it.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Left and Right?

2008-09-14 Thread Gervase Markham
Gervase Markham wrote:
 A nearly-approved proposal for a canal-side object has been objected to
 by someone who thinks that the tag should be on a node which is part of
 the canal rather than next to it, with left/right indicated as part of
 the tag key name.
 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Proposed_features/Mooring

So what's the conclusion here? Am I in a position where half of the
project will vote against if I propose the left:mooring=24h method, and
the other half will vote against if I propose the add-a-separate-way method?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CC Attribution Share Alike License with OSMF exception

2008-09-06 Thread Gervase Markham
Frederik Ramm wrote:
 People will ask how do you ensure that OSMF doesn't fall into evil 
 hands, and you will start to invent boards of directors and boards of 
 overseers and whatnot, and all these will have to be chosen by some kind 
 of vote; then you'll have to define who may vote. But then what happens 
 if the evil guys just register all their users as members and simply 
 jump over whatever the minimum criterion is we put up? So you'll have to 
 put in some clauses that enable you to kick out people or reject their 
 applications or remove their voting rights. Of course, then, there needs 
 to be a provision for people to appeal against such a decision. Etc. 
 etc. etc.

Quite so. Frederik is entirely right. And this is why having the
copyright ownership of the data distributed among all of the
contributors is the best insurance against something evil happening. It
means that pretty much everyone has to agree on any changes of terms.
The OSMF may or may not get a critical mass of people behind the
proposed new licence, but it's fairly certain that an overtaken OSMF
wouldn't get a critical mass of people behind the idea that e.g. OSM
should go proprietary.

Gerv

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Re: [OSM-talk] Path rendering in the cycleway

2008-09-02 Thread Gervase Markham
Erik Johansson wrote:
 Sprinkle your data with note=bla bla tags so it's possible to see
 what the meaning was.

So your solution is to have a database which is human-understandable
(with a lot of reading and effort) but not computer-understandable?

That seems to break rather a large number of usage scenarios for OSM data...

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Path rendering in the cycleway

2008-09-02 Thread Gervase Markham
Christoph Eckert wrote:
 What I was meaning was the other way around: IMO there's nothing wrong with 
 having more than one tagging scheme for one and the same thing. If there was 
 highway=footway, highway=foot_way and highway=way.foot in the database, 
 what's the (really huge) disadvantage?

The disadvantage here is in renderer complexity, and keeping up with all
the rules.

But my point is that if you don't have an authoritative central list of
what tags to use, you get problems of _both_ kinds. The kind you list
may be easier to fix, but the kind I listed is not.

 I agree some additional code needs to be written to support multiple tagging 
 schemes. 

Have you seen the examples in this thread? Extra tags seem to increase
complexity quite quickly.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Path rendering in the cycleway

2008-09-01 Thread Gervase Markham
Frederik Ramm wrote:
  which can be fixed at a later time, if desired. 

How? Say 100 different mappers are using a particular tag - 50 one way,
50 another way. How do you fix this at a later time without going back
to the places on the map and working out which of the two possible
situations is the one tagged, or asking all 100 mappers what they were
doing?

This is the point. Tags have insufficient semantic value in and of
themselves. You need something which explains what each tag is for and
when it should be used.

 Trying to create 
 rules upfront runs a high risk of being impractical. 

Which is why we create rules as we go along.

Creating rules up front vs. Having no rules is a false choice.

 And frankly, if our 
 mappers' creativity leads to two or three different ways of tagging the 
 same thing (but at least it gets mapped well), what's the big deal? 

The big problem is the reverse, when you have one way of tagging two or
three different things. (See above.)

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Left and Right - a proposal

2008-09-01 Thread Gervase Markham
Andy Allan wrote:
 That's the main problem. You are now making a proposal that
 distinguishes nodes at the end of a way from non-terminating nodes -
 since only those in the middle can inherit a sense of direction from
 the way.

True, but not a problem. There's no rule about how many nodes in a
way, so if you want to do this, you can add another one near the end.
This is no different to adding it 5m to the left of the end, it's just
that it's now associated with the way in a relations lite sort of way
(as Hugh described it).

 I'm also with frederick on the left/right thing (most bus stops are
 'on the left', as far as I'm concerned - even when they are on
 opposite sides of the road) and the other objection with compass
 directions is valid for U-shaped roads.

We need to decide whether these things are ways or roads. If they are
roads, they need to have a thickness and be represented as such. (Then
we can tag the two sides differently.) If they are ways, we need to stop
thinking of road-related terminology when we talk about their
properties. Pick one :-)

 The latitude and longitude of point objects should be as accurate as
 we can make them, and if they need some form of logical linking with
 something then we can logically link them without creating bogus
 latlongs :-) 

What is the lat and long of a parking restriction on one side of a road?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Left and Right - a proposal

2008-08-30 Thread Gervase Markham
Aurelien Jacobs wrote:
 One other problem with this is that it defines a set distance from the
 feature to the way.
 
 I don't see this as a problem. It's in fact an additional useful
 information that your left/right scheme just loose.

Except that there's no meaningful distance that moorings should be
from a canal, or that parking restrictions should be from a road.

 This means that, as you zoom out, the feature icon
 migrates onto the way itself as the way rendering thickens.
 
 As you zoom out, the POI aren't displayed anymore, so I doubt
 this can be a problem.

It depends what the POI is, what distance you've set the node from the
road, and so on.

 Except that relations are heavyweight things
 
 Heavyweight things ?? I don't get what you mean here.

A relation requires you to define a minimum of three things - two
ways/nodes to be in relationship, and a name for the relationship they
have. Therefore, however good you make the editors, there is a minimum
complexity you can't get around.

Given this, and given the fact that this problem is common, we should
try and look for a more lightweight solution. The easier it is, the more
people will use it. Typing left: or right: when adding a tag is
always going to be easier than setting up a relation.

 And a way which forms part of a canal might have (for example):
 right:mooring=24h
 left:embankment
 
 How do you specify the distance from the middle of the way ?

As Richard said, you don't. In almost all cases, it's not a meaningful
number.

 How do you render a node which has a right:highway=bus_stop tag and which
 belongs to several ways ? (at an intersection for example)
 
  |
  |
  |
 +---

There are not many bus stops in the middle of junctions. :-)

This is the edgiest of edge cases, but if we ever were to find this
situation coming up, where the tagging could be ambiguous, then you
could just add another node to take the tag, a very short distance down
the correct way.

  |
  |
  |
 ++--

You can make the distance between the two nodes arbitrarily small if you
like.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Left and Right - a proposal

2008-08-30 Thread Gervase Markham
Hugh Barnes wrote:
 So, just to clarify, if I want apply more properties to the bus stop, is it 
 like this:
 
 left:highway=bus_stop
 left:name=Park Road
 … etc?
 
 Have I missed something?

I hadn't thought of that; I was focussing on simple features in the
common case. Does the above seem sensible, or do you have an objection
if I say a tentative Yes? :-)

 This is where I really noticed a problem, but it certainly doesn't kill the 
 idea. The problem is that you're using a syntactic convention that I (at 
 least) associate with XML namespaces. I've seen other tags like piste:foo 
 fashioned after XML namespace prefixes, and they make sense, i.e. the piste 
 vocabulary.

I've picked that convention because it's already used in the project.
But I'm not wedded to it; if people would prefer an underscore, that's
fine. But it seems that underscores are part of some tag names, not
separators.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Left and Right - a proposal

2008-08-30 Thread Gervase Markham
Robin Rattay wrote:
 JOSM already does this.

For oneway only? Or for the words left and right?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Left and Right - a proposal

2008-08-30 Thread Gervase Markham
Frederik Ramm wrote:
 I find that this only makes sense when what is left and what is right is 
 discernible *without* reference to the actual direction of the way.

Why so? The direction of ways is (or can be) indicated with arrows in
editors. Why is it a problem to have tagging which is
way-direction-dependent? We already have it with e.g. oneway.

 E.g. rivers: We have agreed to always tag them in the direction of the 
 flow. So when I'm there tagging something which is on one side of the 
 river, I *know* whether it is left or right, or vice versa, if I look up 
 the way in the database and it is tagged to have a towpath on the left 
 then I *know* where the towpath will be without even looking at the 
 lat/lon of the nodes. Even the general public will be able to use the 
 information that there is something on the left hand side of a river.
 
 On the other hand, when tagging stuff that is to the left and right of a 
 road or footpath, there is no way to know which direction it will have 
 in the database. There is no widely agreed general rule on what 
 constitutes the left side of a road and what the right side. I strongly 
 dislike using left and right in such a situation where direction is 
 arbitrary.

I am not suggesting that maps would ever use the terms left and
right with relation to such tagging. You are right, that would be very
confusing. But for people editing the data, when the way has a clear
direction, I can't think of two better terms to use.

What terms would you use?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Left and Right - a proposal

2008-08-30 Thread Gervase Markham
Aurelien Jacobs wrote:
 This makes me think to something else. What about the route relation.
 A way with a bus stop on each side and a bus route which would include
 only one of the stop (or the two stops but with different stop_number).
 Having separate nodes for each bus stop makes this much easier.

I don't quite understand your objection. Are you saying there would be a
problem if you had a way with a particular node which was tagged as:

left:highway=bus_stop
right:highway=bus_stop
?

If so, the solution is easy - put another node in the way. Anyway, bus
stops are rarely directly opposite each other, at least in the UK,
because you don't want two buses blocking the road in the same place.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] 'Offset path' distances

2008-08-28 Thread Gervase Markham
Richard Fairhurst wrote:
 Could anyone suggest what distance, and for what use, these presets  
 should be? (e.g. narrow canal towpath, 5 metres - i.e. the offset  
 from the canal centreline to the towpath centreline)

For canal to towpath centreline, it would be 5-10m.

Would it be possible for it also automatically to create a relation
between the two ways? As I understand it, people want towpaths and
canals to be linked with a relation, although I haven't yet had a chance
to write a proposal.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Left-Right and opposite - Issue

2008-08-28 Thread Gervase Markham
Florian Lohoff wrote:
 I'd like to see a proposal for tag agnostic tagging of left and right
 e.h. prepend all directional tags with left:cycleway=lane and
 right:cycleway=line.

I think that's a really great idea, and the correct solution to the
problem. However, it would be a reasonably large change and so requires
some consensus.

 So in the future everybody inventing new directional tags does not need
 to care on the editors.

Absolutely.

Gerv


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[OSM-talk] OSMFieldwork - choosing a fieldworker

2008-08-27 Thread Gervase Markham
To whom it may concern,

We are now in a position to determine who will go on the OSM Fieldwork
trip. The procedure is detailed here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/OSMFieldwork/ChoiceProcedure

That page includes the list of eligible names and the criteria. If you
have signed the pledge and made the donation, please check the list to
make sure your name has been included. If you believe that there's been
a mistake of some sort, contact me ASAP.

It is pleasing to note that, currently, our map of Grenada is
significantly more complete in terms of roads (although not names) than
that made via Google Map Maker:

http://www.google.com/mapmaker?gw=10ll=12.052583,-61.745567spn=0.057078,0.080338z=14
vs.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=12.149lon=-61.677zoom=11layers=B00FTF

On the names front, a Grenadian has already been adding POIs and other
notes to the map using OpenStreetBugs:
http://openstreetbugs.appspot.com/?lon=-61.73449007914551lat=12.037366459035228zoom=13
I've transferred many of them to the map; if anyone still has time to
spend and would like to do some more, that would be great.

Gerv


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[OSM-talk] Left and Right?

2008-08-24 Thread Gervase Markham
What's current tagging best practice with things which are to the left
or the right of a way (e.g. bus stops)?

A nearly-approved proposal for a canal-side object has been objected to
by someone who thinks that the tag should be on a node which is part of
the canal rather than next to it, with left/right indicated as part of
the tag key name.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Proposed_features/Mooring

Do we do that for any other tags? Do we have highway:left=bus_stop?

Gerv


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[OSM-talk] What Can Be Done With It?

2008-08-24 Thread Gervase Markham
At SOTM, we were discussing how to show people that OSM isn't just
Google Maps with patchy coverage. ( :-P ) One idea was a page about all
of the cool things you can do with OSM data that you can't do with other
mapping sites' data.

Here is a very small skeleton:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/What_Can_Be_Done_With_It

If people could add other ideas, that would be great. When we have a
good gallery (note: not everything will be able to make it in) then
I'll flesh out each idea with a writeup and screenshots.

Gerv


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[OSM-talk] Bridge reference tagging and relations

2008-08-10 Thread Gervase Markham
My proposal for bridge reference tagging:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Proposed_features/Bridge_Number
which I need for canals has been disapproved on the basis that I should
be using a bridge/tunnel relation:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Talk:Relations/Proposed/Bridges_and_Tunnels

Reading that page, it seems that not only is the proposal not complete
or approved but, even when it is, it will make bridge tagging for canals
about five times as complicated as it would be otherwise. Given that
many of the arguments about complexity on that discussion end with in
that simple case, just use the current tagging scheme, it seems that
this complexity has been noted. Why, then, should such a relation be
necessary for a simple task such as adding a reference to a bridge?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Bridge reference tagging and relations

2008-08-10 Thread Gervase Markham
David Earl wrote:
 If you want to apply a bridge number to the bridge, there's no reason 
 you shouldn't, vote or no vote. And if something were to render it, not 
 doubt it would look right.
 
 However, the thing you are putting the number on has no easy linkage to 
 the canal. If you were boating along the canal and wanted your satnav to 
 pop up the next bridge number, it would have a hard time doing that 
 because there's nothing actually linked to the canal to tell it.

Ways intersecting the canal way, with a foo_ref attribute?

 Of course it could do some tests to find out what bridges pass over the 
 canal by analysing more data in the area, but these are complicated 
 tests. By relating the bridge to the canal you are attaching the bridge 
 number with the thing it is relevant to - the canal - rather than the 
 thing the bridge is attached to - the road crossing it.

Well OK, I see that point. But reading that page, at least, it really
looks like setting up such a relation is a complicated business. Is it
in fact complicated, or is the page just explaining it badly? If it is
complicated, does it really need to be?

Gerv


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[OSM-talk] [Tagging] Tags for canals

2008-08-10 Thread Gervase Markham
I've revised the Lock proposal yet again, and invite comments:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Proposed_features/Lock

The Maximum_Stay proposal just needs two more votes:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Proposed_features/Maximum_Stay

I intend to re-propose Towpath as a relation when I can figure out how
to understand them. This may also be true of bridge numbers; I'm still
thinking.

Gerv
(Away from Tuesday for a week)


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Re: [OSM-talk] Why OpenStreetMap is not Wikipedia

2008-08-01 Thread Gervase Markham
Frederik Ramm wrote:
 2. Commercially Valuable Product
 
 OSM is creating something of considerable commercial value. The 
 estimated market volume of geodata in Europe is way over one billion 
 Euros per year (I found varying figures, some even say it's 1.5 billion 
 for Germany alone, others are more conservative). - I'm sure there was a 
 market for encyclopedias before Wikipedia arrived but it cannot have 
 been this big, ever. Or can it? Let me hear figures if you have some.

I suspect that if Wikipedia took Google ads, their revenue would be in
the hundreds of millions of dollars per year. They are the top hit in
Google for most factual queries, and people read it looking for facts
and info (rather than entertainment) and it's a short step from their to
purchasing.

So their data also has considerable commercial value, although the value
is associated with the eyeballs viewing the most-commonly-used
expression of the data (which they control) rather than the data itself.

 3. Not an End Product

Not to contradict what you've said, but maybe there is an interesting
parallel here between OSM and mozilla.org. Originally, mozilla.org was a
technology provider, the idea being that lots of different companies
and organizations would build Foo Browser and Bar Browser and be the
distributors. Netscape was the biggest, but they did a fairly poor job
of it and still there weren't really many others.

After mozilla.org split from AOL/TW/Netscape, we went into the browser
business ourselves. The result is Firefox.

So it may be that it sounds like a good idea to be a data provider and
that other people will provide the primary user-facing interface to your
data, but that in fact if you want it done well what you have to do is
go out there and do it yourself. :-)

We're currently caught between the two positions.

If we are only a data provider, why is the Cycle Map not hosted
elsewhere and linked to from www.openstreetmap.org, along with any other
interesting maps and views that people provide? Why doesn't the default
map show everything including errors and maplint, so we can more easily
see what's there and what's not?

But if we are, in fact, the primary front end, then we should decide to
go for it, get some super-fast hardware, host as many layers of interest
as we can find, and tell everyone to come to www.openstreetmap.org to
get their maps rather than maps.google.com.

Gerv




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[OSM-talk] Names, split streets and relations

2008-07-27 Thread Gervase Markham

I have a situation (which I suspect is very common) where a street is
split into e.g. 3 ways, because the middle one is part of a bus route or
other relation.

If you label all three ways with name=Foo Street, you get Foo Street
rendered 3 times along a fairly short length, at least in Osmarender. If
you leave the name off the outer ends, then those ways are incorrectly
assumed to be unnamed streets when they have a name. In other words,
you've made the data bogus for rendering reasons.

What is the correct response to this? The obvious thing to do is
attach the street name to a relation which incorporates all three ways.
Do the main renderers yet correctly render street names expressed as
relations?

Gerv



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Re: [OSM-talk] Names, split streets and relations

2008-07-27 Thread Gervase Markham
Shaun McDonald wrote:
 The renderers need fixed, if they can't cope with this kind of data.  

Indeed. My question is: can they? :-)

 Mapnik will only write the name where there is space for it.

Right, but that's precisely the problem. It writes it three times when I
really only want it written once.

(The opposite problem is the very long road which is a single way. The
name should regularly repeat, but I don't think it does on either Mapnik
or Osmarender.)

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Names, split streets and relations

2008-07-27 Thread Gervase Markham
Karl Newman wrote:
 I think the obvious thing is to quit splitting ways just because
 there's a bridge or the speed limit changed... IMHO, the only reason to
 split ways is if the name changes or if the major type changes.

Er, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not possible to apply a tag to
only part of a way. So if the speed limit or anything else changes, you
can't have a continuous way if you want to tag correctly.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] GPS receiver orientation

2008-07-26 Thread Gervase Markham
Joerg Ostertag (OSM Tettnang/Germany) wrote:
 The Antenna of the naviGPS can be seen here:
 
 http://www.ostertag.name/osm/NaviGPS/thumbs/TN_960x1280_img_1220.jpg
 
 which means laying your NaviGPS should result in the best reception.

That's very helpful. So if you have a flat antenna like that, it's best
if it is in the horizontal plane?

Gerv


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[OSM-talk] GPS receiver orientation

2008-07-25 Thread Gervase Markham
Random question: does the orientation of a GPS receiver make any 
difference? If I hold my BGT-11 vertically, will it find it harder to 
get and keep a lock than if I hold it horizontally? Also, does it make 
it slower to get a lock if I walk along while it's trying?

I don't know the chipset, if that makes a difference - I think it may be 
SirfStar II. The wiki would know (I'm offline as I type).

Gerv




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Re: [OSM-talk] Slippy map not working in Firefox

2008-07-25 Thread Gervase Markham
Frederik Ramm wrote:
 No problems with firefox 1.04 under Debian ;-)

Anyone still using Firefox 1 or 1.5, please upgrade. These versions are
old enough to have known serious security issues.

This has been a public service announcement :-)

Gerv




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[OSM-talk] View in OSM Greasemonkey script

2008-07-22 Thread Gervase Markham
OSMers may be interested in a script for Greasemonkey[0] which adds a 
View in OpenStreetMap link to a popular alternative online mapping site.

http://www.gerv.net/software/userscripts/gmap_in_osm.user.js

Let me know if it doesn't work for you.

Gerv

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748


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Re: [OSM-talk] New: 'OSM Mapper' for OpenStreetMap Contributors, by Ito World

2008-07-19 Thread Gervase Markham
Peter Miller wrote:
 Ito World Ltd is pleased to offer its new product ‘OSM Mapper’ to the
 OSM community. We demonstrated this product at ‘State of the Map’ and a
 number of OSM contributors have been trying it out since then. We are
 now ready to release it more widely.

Peter,

As no-one else has said it on the list yet, I just wanted to say that 
this tool is ridiculously, amazingly, mind-blowingly cool.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Rendering name of route relations

2008-07-18 Thread Gervase Markham
Andrew MacKinnon wrote:
 Recently, it appears that Mapnik has started rendering the name of
 relations on the map, as if they were street names. For example, it
 renders the name of the Cosburn bus route along Haldon Avenue in
 this map:http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=43.6978lon=-79.31117zoom=17.
 This is clearly undesirable. Could someone please fix this?

Some relations need to have their names rendered, and some don't. (If I 
have a street, one part of which is One Way, I have to break it into 
three sections to add the oneway=yes. But I still want only a single 
instance of the street name rather than two or three. I believe the 
correct solution to this is a relation, but it would require the name to 
be rendered in this case.

Perhaps we need a tag for an identifying string for a relation, which is 
not supposed to be rendered?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Fieldwork in Grenada

2008-07-16 Thread Gervase Markham
Gervase Markham wrote:
 At State of the Map, an initiative was started to improve our coverage
 of the Caribbean, as a little friendly competition with Google MapMaker.

There is now a wiki page about this effort here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/OSMFieldwork
Please fill it in with useful information. Some of the islands concerned 
don't even have coastline yet.

Grenada is doing amazingly well - it's gone from this:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=12.149lon=-61.677zoom=12layers=B00FTF
to this:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=12.1141lon=-61.6849zoom=12layers=0B0FTF
(Note: this comparison won't work after Mapnik re-renders :-)

44 people have signed up; 16 more are needed for us to have enough money 
to send someone to finish it off! Sign up if you haven't already :-)
http://www.pledgebank.com/osmfieldwork

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Fieldwork in Grenada

2008-07-15 Thread Gervase Markham
Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists) wrote:
 I don't know if this source is of any additional help:

 http://unosat.web.cern.ch/unosat/asp/prod_free.asp?id=53

These are all lower-res than the Yahoo imagery, so I don't think so. :-( 
But thanks for looking :-)

Gerv




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[OSM-talk] Fieldwork in Grenada

2008-07-13 Thread Gervase Markham
At State of the Map, an initiative was started to improve our coverage 
of the Caribbean, as a little friendly competition with Google MapMaker.

It works like this: people pledge using Pledgebank to spend one hour or 
more adding to OpenStreetMap by tracing over Yahoo! aerial imagery on a 
Caribbean island, and to make a donation of £10 to the OpenStreetMap 
Foundation. This also gives you the chance to go there to do some 
fieldwork. If we get enough people (60), the OSMF will(*) pick one 
pledger at random to go to the Caribbean (probably Grenada) for a week 
or two to get road names, finish the map and do some evangelism.

Sign up here:
http://www.pledgebank.com/osmfieldwork

To make this work, we need 60 people willing to contribute an hour of 
their time and £10 to the OSMF. If that's you, sign up today!

Gerv


(*) Or may. There is no promise, because then this would become a 
lottery. But then, we can't make the fieldworker promise to work on the 
map while they are in the Caribbean either. So it's trust on all sides.


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Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads

2008-07-12 Thread Gervase Markham
Richard Fairhurst wrote:
 Have they really? I don't recall ever seeing this, and I do quite a
 lot of rural mapping.

Well, there was a note on Map Features saying not to do it, but until 
recently it didn't say what you _should_ do.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] UK post box data

2008-07-06 Thread Gervase Markham
Tom Taylor wrote:
 I did some parsing of the PDF, and it seems that of the 114,000 post  
 boxes in the UK, 50599 seem to have valid postcode data.
 
 I'm currently geocoding these postcodes using Yahoo's service, and  
 wondered if the resulting longitudes and latitudes would be of  
 interest to OSM and could be integrated. I'm not entirely clear on the  
 licensing of it. Can anyone clarify?

Why not do this all in reverse?

FreeThePostcode is great, but it seems to me that there would also be
value in a (more complete) postcode set which combined their stuff with
data derived from OSM.

Basically, you take an address with street and postcode, use the
NameFinder to find the street, click on it, and the tool marks that
street as having the postcode. (I've been meaning to write this tool for
months but not had time.)

However, for this to work, you need a big file of addresses covering the
UK. Er, hang on a minute, you just obtained one :-)

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Tagwatch for europe

2008-07-05 Thread Gervase Markham
Pieren wrote:
 Yes, I like also the 1 buildinge, the 3 buildings, the 2 buildingy, the
 1 buildng, the 4 buildning, the 1 buildong, the 3 builduing, the 18 (!)
 buildung, the 1 builing, the 2 buillding.

What we really need is a tagwatch where you can click one of those,
correct it, and it fixes all instances in the database. Now _that_ would
be powerful and useful.

Gerv


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[OSM-talk] Paying registration fee for SOTM

2008-06-29 Thread Gervase Markham
After I signed up for SOTM, I received an email on the 6th of May saying:

You will receive a further email soon providing details of how to pay
your registration fee.

It is now the 29th of June and I have not yet received this email, nor
have I received a reply to two further Ahem? I'd like to give you
money emails I sent to the person who the original came from.

I don't want to embarrass anyone in public, but I am beginning to be
concerned that I'm not actually properly registered. Having booked
flights and accommodation, that would be somewhat disappointing.

Anyone know what's going on?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Paying registration fee for SOTM

2008-06-29 Thread Gervase Markham
Etienne wrote:
 There have been some reports of invoices not being received - probably
 due to spam filtering.

I have filters, but I keep all the spam. (Several GB of it.) I've
searched back through the relevant time area and can't find this message.

 invoice then please let me know and I'll resend.  Gerv, I will resend
 yours immediately.

Thank you :-)

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] [Tagging] Voting open for Bridge proposal

2008-05-21 Thread Gervase Markham
Alex Mauer wrote:
 As noted on the talk page, the vote is still open since it has not been
 open for the requisite 2 weeks.  Voting is apparently now on the talk page.

The rules for a vote being approved are  15 Yeses, or a unanimous vote 
of 6 or more. There are currently 27 Yeses and 0 Nos. Given that the 
only way the vote could be defeated would be by 28 people coming out of 
the woodwork and all voting no, it doesn't seem like too much of a 
liberty to speed this section of the process up and consider it passed.

Gerv



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Re: [OSM-talk] A tag tab

2008-05-21 Thread Gervase Markham
Bruce Cowan wrote:
 It would list all the tags being used via tagwatch, which is updated
 every week based on the new planet. People could then vote (once only on
 each tag) on tags that are being used.

Tags are not always self-describing. Quick test: without checking Map 
Features, can you tell me what natural=land means?

Given this fact, what would voting actually mean?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] [Tagging] Voting open for Bridge proposal

2008-05-19 Thread Gervase Markham
Shaun McDonald wrote:
 It is a special kind of bridge that is usually longer than the normal
 bridge.

So it has longer sides in the rendering...

 There is often some historical interest related to it. It may
 even be a tourist attraction.

Both of these things can be true of normal bridges, and there are 
various tags and additional icons which can be used in those cases. My 
question is: why does a viaduct need a different rendering *just because 
it's a viaduct*? I've not seen generalist maps which differentiate.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] [Tagging] Voting open for Bridge proposal

2008-05-19 Thread Gervase Markham
Raphael Studer wrote:
 If we tag it different, why not render it different?

Because applying that principle consistently leads to extremely 
complicated maps. Not all differences in the data require a different 
rendering on a generalist map such as the one on www.openstreetmap.org.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] JOSM WMS plugin, Y!, and firefox 3

2008-05-19 Thread Gervase Markham
Tom Hughes wrote:
 It's not immediately clear from the bug details that there is any
 replacement - my best guess at the moment is that there is but that it
 can only be activated programmatically, and possible only in debug
 builds.

I emailed Robert O'Callahan, one of the Mozilla Gecko developers.

I asked:

  Is there any other way of doing what they want to do with Firefox 3?

And he replied:

  Yes. One way would be to write a Firefox extension or a custom
  XULRunner app and use canvas.drawWindow.

So the good news is that you don't need a debug build :-)
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Drawing_Graphics_with_Canvas#Additional_Features

A custom XULRunner app is probably a bit heavyweight for what we want. I 
would suggest that the YWMS team look into creating a lightweight 
Firefox extension which uses some form of IPC to exchange data with the 
running JOSM.

Of course, once you have an extension, assuming the deal with Yahoo 
doesn't prevent it, you would probably just want to grab the tile images 
directly from the DOM rather than screenshot the page and try and find 
the edges of the map section. So perhaps canvas.drawWindow isn't 
actually what you want.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] [Tagging] Voting open for Bridge proposal

2008-05-18 Thread Gervase Markham
Gervase Markham wrote:
 As requested:
 
 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Proposed_features/Bridge

This has now been approved, with  15 votes.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] [Tagging] Voting open for Bridge proposal

2008-05-18 Thread Gervase Markham
Raphael Studer wrote:
 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Proposed_features/Bridge
 This has now been approved, with  15 votes.
 
 How, that was fast :)
 
 Now lets find a way to render viaduct and swing.

Swing is usually rendered, at least on maps which focus on the thing 
_under_ the bridge rather than the thing over the bridge, as a filled 
black circle with a line extending from it, the line being the bridge 
over the e.g. canal.

Why does viaduct need a different rendering from bridge? Surely you know 
it's a viaduct because there's a train track running over it?

Gerv


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[OSM-talk] [Tagging] Voting open for Bridge proposal

2008-05-15 Thread Gervase Markham
As requested:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Proposed_features/Bridge

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] [tagging] Bridge proposal

2008-05-14 Thread Gervase Markham
Raphael Studer wrote:
 Does someone care about this proposal?

Yes, sorry, I'll move it to a vote RSN.

Although I'd kind of given up on the whole voting system, given the 
antipathy towards it (and, in fact, towards any form of authority) in 
certain quarters.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] [OSM-dev] Developers requested to help provide completeness tools

2008-05-14 Thread Gervase Markham
Frederik Ramm wrote:
 Once we have a few applications in place that get viewed by *many*
 people, we could just have a button somewhere along the margin of the
 page that says: I know the area and what I see here looks correct.

Would it not make more sense to have a button saying This map is 
incorrect in some way, and it opens a text box optionally inviting you 
to say what is wrong. These notes can then be stored, and if someone 
comes to redo that area of the map, can provide guidance.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Political Change

2008-05-11 Thread Gervase Markham
Jeffrey Martin wrote:
 Some lists want me to answer on the top and some on the bottom.
 Is this a bottom answer email list?

Most email lists will accept the style where you answer below the thing 
you are commenting on, but trim it well so people don't have to page 
past loads of verbiage to get to it. Like this.

Gerv

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Re: [OSM-talk] TIGER mapping party

2008-05-11 Thread Gervase Markham
SteveC wrote:
 I and others have been doing a lot of fixing of TIGER data all over  
 the US. There is still a lot to do and Richard has added some really  
 useful features to potlatch to speed it up.

Is there a TIGER fixing HOWTO somewhere? As in Here are the areas not 
yet done, here are the sort of problems we see, here's what to do about 
them?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Overhaul of voting process

2008-05-08 Thread Gervase Markham
Christoph Eckert wrote:
 IMO map features should be built on top of tagwatch. This way tagging 
 recommendations would be built on top what's actually used. Much more 
 democratic than the current process IMO :) .

Tagwatch tells you what is. It cannot by itself tell you what should be. 
It could be that everyone is using a particular tag for some feature, 
but that tag nevertheless has problems. It may also, as Robin points 
out, show you that 50% of people are using one tag, and 50% are using 
another. What then?

Lastly, it cannot tell you if 50% of people are using foo=bar to mean 
one thing, and the other 50% are using it to mean something else. Tags 
do not contain all of their semantics in their names.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Please enable commercial use

2008-05-07 Thread Gervase Markham
Sebastian Spaeth wrote:
 If they say but I would really like to do X, if you give me in
 writing that I can do X I'll give you $10.000 and print OSM adverts on
 every GPS I sell, then we still cannot say it because we're not the
 owners of the data. 
 
 In Linux that problem is solved by companies bying their product from 
 Redhat, including some kind of insurance that RedHat provides. If there 
 are legal hassles, then Redhat would be sued and RedHat would have to 
 deal with the 2 copyright holders and not the end-user (if you are 
 not SCO and live in a parallel universe).

If we are talking about community norms, then how about looking at those 
surrounding e.g. GPL enforcement? If a company violates the GPL, you 
don't find the FSF or anyone else wading in at the first sniff with 
lawyers and claims for damages. They try very hard to sort things out in 
private, and usually succeed.

If we have a Share Alike licence, what precedent makes companies think 
that if they mistakenly transgress that OSM contributors will take such 
immediate drastic action?

Without attributing particular motives to anyone, I would make the 
general point that if a company doesn't want to share, it should come 
out and say so, rather than argue for PD on the grounds that an SA 
licence creates more legal uncertainty.

Gerv

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Users whose contributions are in the public domain

2008-05-06 Thread Gervase Markham
Frederik Ramm wrote:
 That's my problem as well. We are not much better than other owners of
 geodata. They say:
 
 1. Geodata is very valuable and takes a lot of work to collect and
those who do all the work should be the owners of the data and
dictate under what rules it may be used;
 2. So we charge an arm and a leg for it
 
 And we say
 
 1. Geodata is very valuable and takes a lot of work to collect and
those who do all the work should be the owners of the data and
dictate under what rules it may be used;
 2. So we give it away free of charge but force everyone using our 
data to comply with our license.

But you must at least recognise that we charge an arm and a leg for it 
is by no means the only restriction the other owners put on. They put on 
a whole load of restrictions on what you can use it for. We, on the 
other hand, make it free-as-in-price and don't put any restrictions on 
what you can use it for.

I know it suits your argument to make this parallel, but I really don't 
think that it's very close, objectively.

 It's unfair somehow, isn't it - we take PD stuff, put it into OSM,
 make it more attractive to a point where nobody wants to use the
 original PD stuff any more - everyone is more or less forced to use
 our version that comes under our license. 

Hang on... aren't you there admitting that Share Alike communities work 
better than PD communities? After all, if PD communities worked better, 
why is there not a thriving PD project working on the TIGER data?

 (I find it morally questionable of us to do this but it is undoubtedly
 legal. Some Copyleft advocates even manage a smile when they tell me
 that I'm free to collect data under PD but of course they'll gobble it
 up under Share-Alike and not give anything back - You're asking for
 it.)

Er, but you are, aren't you? That's _precisely_ what you want to allow 
people to do with your data.

Gerv

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Please enable commercial use

2008-05-06 Thread Gervase Markham
Nathan Vander Wilt wrote:
 I am writing a geotagging application that I hope to sell. When I first 
 found OSM, I was very excited for what I could use it for but as I've 
 followed the discussions I've become a lot more concerned. While there 
 are many users who want their work to be fully in the public domain, it 
 seems that Ordinance Surveyesque FUD concerning derivative works might 
 trump even those users' contributions. I cannot open my tiny company and 
 our potential customers to the viral effects of a broad application of 
 the Share Alike intentions under a broad notion of derivative works. 

The notion of derivative works is a fairly well defined one under 
copyright law. Many, many companies deal with this concept every day.

 The proposed ODL/ODC licenses would clear up some of the grey areas, but 
 not all.

Can you give examples of grey areas that would remain?

 I really would like to see a license as simple as the following:
 
 For data users -
 0. Open Street Map collects and creates public domain map data.
 1. Attribution of Open Street Map is expected. We make it easy.
 2. Contributing back or freely sharing modifications is very strongly  
 encouraged.

Except that neither 1 or 2 would have any force in law. So this is 
equivalent to PD.

Gerv

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Re: [OSM-talk] Mapnik viewer for OSM data - UI suggestions?

2008-05-04 Thread Gervase Markham
Nick Whitelegg wrote:
 My idea is to try and shield the user from the XML file altogether. Rather 
 than get a user to open an XML file, I'd like users to be able to simply 
 open an OSM file, download data from the API, or retrieve data from a 
 PostGIS database, and then use the UI to define styles for OSM key/value 
 combinations. 

Right - but which styles? E.g. for roads, do you want to allow them to 
define colour, border colour, width, ...? For pubs, do you want them to 
be able to choose their own icon, select from a list?

 I'd also like the users to be able to define, and order, layers for their 
 map.

So they have to be able to decide what features go on which layer?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Static maps using the new export function

2008-04-30 Thread Gervase Markham
Tom Chance wrote:
 I can't see an obvious way to do this, maybe I just need to dig around in
 the code behind the export tab, but is it possible to already do something
 similar to the Google static maps feature, i.e. allow people to just
 specify a URL in an img tag and have the static image with optional marker
 automatically created?
 
 http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/staticmaps/

What are the advantages of this over just exporting the map and copying 
the image to your web page? Just that the map is automatically updated 
for you when people fix it? Or is there something else?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Mapnik viewer for OSM data - UI suggestions?

2008-04-30 Thread Gervase Markham
Nick Whitelegg wrote:
 One of the OSM projects I'm hoping to work on is a Mapnik GUI renderer for 
 ..osm files (and live API data, cached locally, and PostGIS databases), 
 based on the Mapnik viewer. However what would be good is to get some user 
 interface suggestions from people. The aim is to try and make it as easy 
 as possible for people to render, and print, custom Mapnik maps.

Are you asking people which of Mapnik's many knobs you think need 
exposing in your UI? Or have you chosen a set of knobs but want to know 
how best to present those capabilities in a usable way?

If the former, where can we find a list of knobs to choose from? If the 
latter, which knobs have you chosen?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] GPS recommendations

2008-04-23 Thread Gervase Markham
Frederik Ramm wrote:
 I would be reluctant to publicly recommend anything where OSM gets any
 kind of kickback, _even if_ that device would be one I recommend in
 private. That would look as if our recommendation could be bought!

Or perhaps the opposite; we like this so much and we want you to use it 
so much that we've gone to the effort of arranging a deal.

Given that the people recommending don't get any money themselves, the 
it's all self-interest link is weak.

 Maybe we should define a few categories (BT mouse without logger,
 standalone logger without display, standard hand-held GPS with
 display, outdoor-ish hand-held GPS with display, in-car navigation
 device) and identify the 2-3 best devices in each. 

That's just the sort of thing I had in mind.

 But how would such
 a list be kept current? As long as it is just a Wiki page, anyone can
 add their GPS preferences or write about a cool new device. But if you
 implement a process to reach a project recommendation then obviously
 the final result would not be just a Wiki page, it would be a page
 which may only be changed after repeating the process...

That sounds like a feature to me, not a bug...

Perhaps we need a page GPS endorsements. Or perhaps the ability to 
endorse items on the current page, and then order by endorsements. A 
crude form of voting.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Attribution

2008-04-07 Thread Gervase Markham
Michael Collinson wrote:
 I echo Tom's sentiment that www.openstreetmap.org/Attribution 
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/Attribution would be a cleaner public 
 link to present if possible.

The shorter, the better (sometimes space is limited). So why not, with a 
small DNS change:

openstreetmap.org/credit

?

The www isn't needed if your DNS is set up right; everyone can see it's 
a web address anyway. And credit is shorter than attribution.

Gerv

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Fwd: OSM (Open Street Map) Creative Commons Licence 2.5 (CCL) versus GeoBase Unrestricted Use Licence Agreement (GeoBase licence)

2008-04-07 Thread Gervase Markham
Robin Paulson wrote:
 have i missed something? i thought osm used Creative Commons
 Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license not Creative Commons Share Alike
 2.5 Licence
 
 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/OpenStreetMap_License

I assume the name difference was just loose wording; all recent CC 
licences have included Attribution. It's no longer optional.

The version difference may be a significant error; I haven't looked at 
diffs.

Gerv

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Re: [OSM-talk] anonymous contributions still allowed ?

2008-04-07 Thread Gervase Markham
Richard Fairhurst wrote:
 It's only Potlatch that prohibits such edits. JOSM and the main API  
 permit them.

Can we please agree to stop doing that, and then turn off the 
capability? It's just storing up trouble for later, when and if we want 
to make licence-related changes...

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] UK outdoors mapping event - week of June 23rd

2008-04-05 Thread Gervase Markham
Nick Whitelegg wrote:
 Following on from last year's successful Lake District mapping week I'd 
 like to float the idea of a follow up this year - I now have a definite 
 week in the early summer when I know I'll be free namely the week 
 beginning June 23rd.

I might be interested in this (the Lake District version). Keep me 
informed. (I would have emailed you privately but gmane didn't reveal 
your email address.)

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] [tagging] RFC: railway=incline

2008-03-29 Thread Gervase Markham
Alex Mauer wrote:
 I think it is possible, even likely, that we might want to apply it to 
 something other than railway, which can share a way with a railway.  The 
 simple/plain traction= would preclude this.

Can you give an example of such a thing?

What features shares a way with a railway at all, traction or no traction?

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] GPS recommendation

2008-03-27 Thread Gervase Markham
Richard Fairhurst wrote:
 IME the NaviGPS is not as reliable or as intuitive as I would like.  
 These units are going to be used by children and primary school  
 teachers so this is a worry.

I have a NaviGPS, and I wouldn't put it in the hands of a child and 
expect them to understand it. It may be fairly cheap, featureful and 
have Linux support, but massively user-friendly it's not.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Name finder and home page search working again

2008-03-27 Thread Gervase Markham
David Earl wrote:
 Suggestions
 for addressing this welcome - incrementally returning results is one
 possibility I guess. You can qualify it ..., UK (provided the is_in is
 present - which is almost never is for US places), but that's non-obvious.

I strongly suspect Google Maps either only searches within the 
currently-visible area, or prioritises results from there, or starts 
there and works out. This may not help with search speed (depending on 
how much location data you have, I don't know) but it will probably help 
with relevance and ordering.

Gerv


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Re: [OSM-talk] Tag proposal/approval system is too heavyweight

2008-03-19 Thread Gervase Markham
Frederik Ramm wrote:
 Why not ditch the whole notion of approved features altogether. It  
 doesn't cut any meat in our community anyway. What does approved  
 mean, and who has the right to approve something?

Having an approved set of tags means that there is ideally 1, but 
certainly a small number of ways of tagging common features, rather than 
15 or 50. This makes it much easier for renderers, routing and other 
types of software, and much easier for people who are improving an area 
of map that someone else has worked on to figure out what they meant.

It also means that when a particular tag is used, it only has one 
meaning. Without some standardisation, does maxspeed=50 mean mph or kph? 
Or does it vary from country to country?

What is the difference between your argument and Why have the notion of 
an approved set of HTML tags? The web is a collaborative community. 
No-one has the right to approve anything. We should all just use the 
markup tags that seem most sensible.?

 Right, generate it from the planet file and that's that. Maybe have a  
 wiki page that documents what the renderers do and at what zoom level  
 (ideally auto-generated as well).

Except that such a generated page would have no way of ordering and 
classifying the tags so that you could find the one you wanted.

Gerv


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