Re: [Talk-us] MapRoulette challenges wiki

2012-11-03 Thread Alan Millar
 Even in Map Roulette, there are some places where I could have taken a larger 
 chunk, a single area with 5 connectivity errors is just as easy to fix; I 
 just got one such roulette spin, and wasn't sure if I should fix the others 
 or not, because there's no way to mark them fixed.

Fix them anyways. It was explicitly recommended in the previous incarnation as 
remap-a-tron, because all the data was re-analyzed nightly. I'm pretty sure I 
read the same for maproulette. They'll get recognized as fixed, I'm sure. 

- Alan

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Re: [Talk-us] [Imports] What to do with unnamed NHD streams

2012-10-29 Thread Alan Millar
 What would be saved by dropping the nameless intermittent streams assuming 
 they were simplified? 

I expect this really varies by location. In my area (Washington County, Oregon) 
these streams were quite useless. Most of them were just plain gone, replaced 
by farm fields or suburban housing tracts. (Insignificant snow here also)

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to make them available as a separate OSM file, 
which local mappers could import in addition to the main file. (yes, duplicated 
nodes, blah blah blah, josm verify-fix, big deal :-)

- Alan
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Re: [Talk-us] Burlington, Vermont road classification

2012-10-18 Thread Alan Millar
The crux of the problem is the answer to the question: Which is more
important, outside/official classifications, or physical characteristics?

The tagging pages on the wiki don't really provide clarity on this
matter. 

Although the wiki may not be very clear, this subject has been discussed 
extensively on talk-us in the last year or two.  For the highway tag in 
particular, the consensus I've seen is that it is definitely more about the 
physical characteristics, driveability, and perhaps perceived local 
importance than any government classifications.  Yes, part of that is 
subjective.   Highway=motorway in particular is about physical characteristics, 
regardless of being state, US, or Interstate highway.  
Primary/secondary/tertiary are more related to size and/or local importance, 
which sometimes matches gov't classifications but often does not.  (Related to 
this is the ref tag, used to designate official route numbers.)

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Re: [Talk-us] Whole-US Garmin Map update - NOW working for me

2012-10-03 Thread Alan Millar

On 9/29/2012 2:18 PM, Alan wrote:

Anyone else have problems with recent versions of these no longer working for 
them?


Um, sorry, false alarm.  After completely clearing out my SD card, and 
making sure there were no left over recycle bin or hidden files, I tried 
it all again and it worked.  Looks like just stupid user error on my 
part :-(


(I do wonder if there was a more subtle explanation in the VFAT 
filesystem on the sd card, where the Nuvi may only read the DOS 8.3 
short filename.  I wonder if there is a scenario where one might copy a 
file to the card and then rename it, ending with a long name of 
gmapsupp.img and a short name of GMAPSU~1.IMG or something.  Always 
looking for someone to blame other than me :-)


Thanks for everyone's advice anyways!

- Alan


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Re: [Talk-us] Whole-US Garmin Map update - NOW working for me

2012-10-03 Thread Alan Millar

On 9/29/2012 2:18 PM, Alan wrote:

Anyone else have problems with recent versions of these no longer working for 
them?


Um, sorry, false alarm.  After completely clearing out my SD card, and 
making sure there were no left over recycle bin or hidden files, I tried 
it all again and it worked.  Looks like just stupid user error on my 
part :-(


(I do wonder if there was a more subtle explanation in the VFAT 
filesystem on the sd card, where the Nuvi may only read the DOS 8.3 
short filename.  I wonder if there is a scenario where one might copy a 
file to the card and then rename it, ending with a long name of 
gmapsupp.img and a short name of GMAPSU~1.IMG or something.  Always 
looking for someone to blame other than me :-)


Thanks for everyone's advice anyways!

- Alan


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Re: [Talk-us] Whole-US Garmin Map update - not working for me

2012-10-01 Thread Alan Millar
On Sun, 2012-09-30 at 21:09 -0700, Dave Hansen wrote:
   Could folks that are having trouble try some single
 tiles or a set generated directly from Lambertus's site?

OK, I tried directly from Lambertus's site.  

I tried the pre-defined state of Oregon from

http://osm.pleiades.uni-wuppertal.de/garmin/generic/26-09-2012/98f98a467c2ca93389e891f40b15a33d/

and it worked.  The Nuvi 200 recognized it as OSM generic routable.

I'm requesting a custom tile set now from there.  We'll see what it
does.

- Alan




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Re: [Talk-us] Remap-a-tron level 2 complete! Suggestions for level 3?

2012-09-30 Thread Alan Millar
Another suggestion: motorways and trunks without lanes=number tags 

- Alan


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Re: [Talk-us] Whole-US Garmin Map update - not working for me

2012-09-30 Thread Alan Millar
On Sat, 2012-09-29 at 17:48 -0400, Richard Welty wrote:
 my Nuvi is relatively new (about 2 years old). how old is the firmware 
 on your Nuvi?

Mine is rather old.  Not sure about the date, but probably at least 5
years old.  It just says Nuvi 200, software version 5.00, GPS SW
Version 2.20b.

Next I'll try Dave's suggestion of going straight to Lambertus's site.

- Alan


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Re: [Talk-us] JOSM zoom limits per server solved (fixes Tiger grey overlay )

2012-09-23 Thread Alan Millar
I also found there is a minimum zoom also. Put it in the url as min,max like

tms[16,19]:http://...

Fixes the grey tiles when I zoom back out. 

- Alan


On Sep 23, 2012, at 12:54 AM, Toby Murray toby.mur...@gmail.com wrote:

 I knew about the max zoom setting but for some reason never thought about 
 applying it to the TIGER tiles to fix the grey
 
 Toby
 
 On Sep 21, 2012 1:23 PM, Alan Millar grunthos...@yahoo.com wrote:
 Maybe everyone else knows this, but I just discovered it myself so I
 thought I would share it.
 
 I've been using Remap-a-tron to fix up US roads.  I use both the Bing
 imagery and the TIGER 2012 tiles overlaid, and it makes it really
 useful.
 
 However, I've been frustrated that I can pretty far in with the Bing
 images, but if I go too far, the Tiger (normally transparent) tiles turn
 grey and obscure the Bing images.  I've been continually turning off and
 back on the Tiger layer, which is a bit annoying after a while.
 
 JOSM has an easy limit in the Preferences for the maximum zoom, but it
 affects everything.  I set it to 19, and then I did not get the grey
 boxes from Tiger, but did not get the higher detailed photos from Bing
 either.
 
 As it turns out, JOSM does have a max-zoom per tile server feature; it
 just is not obvious or clearly documented that I could find.
 
 You can enter it as part of the TMS url like this:
 
 tms[19]:http://{switch:a,b,c}.tile.openstreetmap.us/tiger2012_roads/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png
 
 The number 19, right up front, says that the maximum zoom to use for
 this layer is 19.  This solved the whole thing for me.
 
 I also found that if you go into Josm preferences in expert mode, and
 dig and dig and dig into the imagery providers entries, this is labeled
 as max-zoom.  Too bad it isn't easier to find.
 
 Anyways, hope this helps others too.
 
 - Alan
 
 
 
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[Talk-us] JOSM zoom limits per server solved (fixes Tiger grey overlay )

2012-09-21 Thread Alan Millar
Maybe everyone else knows this, but I just discovered it myself so I
thought I would share it.

I've been using Remap-a-tron to fix up US roads.  I use both the Bing
imagery and the TIGER 2012 tiles overlaid, and it makes it really
useful.

However, I've been frustrated that I can pretty far in with the Bing
images, but if I go too far, the Tiger (normally transparent) tiles turn
grey and obscure the Bing images.  I've been continually turning off and
back on the Tiger layer, which is a bit annoying after a while.

JOSM has an easy limit in the Preferences for the maximum zoom, but it
affects everything.  I set it to 19, and then I did not get the grey
boxes from Tiger, but did not get the higher detailed photos from Bing
either.

As it turns out, JOSM does have a max-zoom per tile server feature; it
just is not obvious or clearly documented that I could find.

You can enter it as part of the TMS url like this:

tms[19]:http://{switch:a,b,c}.tile.openstreetmap.us/tiger2012_roads/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png

The number 19, right up front, says that the maximum zoom to use for
this layer is 19.  This solved the whole thing for me.

I also found that if you go into Josm preferences in expert mode, and
dig and dig and dig into the imagery providers entries, this is labeled
as max-zoom.  Too bad it isn't easier to find.

Anyways, hope this helps others too.

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Large area of deleted streets in Riverside, Calif.

2012-09-14 Thread Alan Millar
Here is a neighborhood that could be imported from TIGER 2012:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=32.29183lon=-95.4831zoom=17

Thanks

- Alan


If most of it really is missing then it might be a good candidate to
re-import from new TIGER data as I have done in some other hard hit
areas of LA. It would help if you supply a permalink to the exact
area.

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Re: [Talk-us] The Remap-A-Tron, Second Wave

2012-09-10 Thread Alan Millar
Quite a few hours later, I'm still seeing the 403 errors on those two paths.  
I've cleared browser cache and reloaded, with no improvment  :-(


Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /remappingservice/count
on this server.

 
Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu) Server at lima.schaaltreinen.nl Port 80







 From: Martijn van Exel m...@rtijn.org
To: Dale Puch dale.p...@gmail.com 
Cc: Charlotte Wolter techl...@techlady.com;  Talk-us@openstreetmap.org 
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2012 6:44 AM
Subject: Re: [Talk-us] The Remap-A-Tron, Second Wave
 
What is your browser? Can you inspect the network activity on the
page? Are http://lima.schaaltreinen.nl/remappingservice/ and
http://lima.schaaltreinen.nl/remappingservice/count called and do they
return valid (geo)JSON?
Can you try a force-reload of the page? (ctrl-shift-r if you use Firefox)
Does anyone else still have trouble?

On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 11:52 PM, Dale Puch dale.p...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hmm Still seems stuck on the same location for me.  I cleared my cache just
 to make sure that wasn't it.

 Dale


 On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 12:44 AM, Martijn van Exel m...@rtijn.org wrote:

 I repaired it - it was an apache config setting that was a little too
 strict. How'd that happen? Your guess is as good as mine. Bottom line
 is the Remap-a-tron works like a charm once more.

 Martijn

 On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 6:58 PM, Martijn van Exel m...@rtijn.org wrote:
  yea, something busted, I will look into it tonight... Hang in there
  folks - and thanks for using!
 
  Martijn
 
  On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 6:50 PM, Dale Puch dale.p...@gmail.com wrote:
  Not sure if it is just me, but this seems stuck today.  All was fine
  yesterday.
  I only get one map location and it will not move to another with 'W'
 
  A few of the deleted ways have led me to some large missing
  subdivisions and
  poor downtown type areas...  A bit of OCD kicks in and an hour+ later
  I'm
  finally done :p
 
  Dale
 
 
  On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 11:57 AM, Charlotte Wolter
  techl...@techlady.com
  wrote:
 
 
          I told Martijn the toold would be a great way to do Projects
  of
  the Month or Projects of the Week. Maybe there would be a way to track
  who
  did what, so we can recognize people who did a lot of work.
 
  Charlotte
 
 
 
  At 02:20 PM 9/7/2012, you wrote:
 
  A fantastic tool!  If it can be expanded to finding other issues even
  better.
 
  Dale
 
  On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 3:38 PM, Martijn van Exel m...@rtijn.org wrote:
  Hi,
 
  On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 12:37 PM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com
  wrote:
   A similar query could be used to find overlapping ways which are of
   the same level and do not share a way.
   This could help with routing.
  
   There are a lot of queries like this which wouldn't be hard to do.
  
   - Serge
 
  Interestingly I was just discussing overlapping ways with Telenav
  yesterday. This will be a very useful thing to detect, but as these
  overlapping ways are not visible on the Mapnik map so the R-a-T may
  not be so useful for that. Some folks over at Telenav are developing a
  JOSM plugin that works in a similar way (iterating over error points
  pseudo-randomly and letting you fix them one by one) and may be better
  suited to these 'invisible' problems.
 
  Martijn
 
  --
  martijn van exel
  http://oegeo.wordpress.com
 
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  --
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  Charlotte Wolter
  927 18th Street Suite A
  Santa Monica, California
  90403
  +1-310-597-4040
  techl...@techlady.com
  Skype: thetechlady
 
  The Four Internet Freedoms
  Freedom to visit any site on the Internet
  Freedom to access any content or service that is not illegal
  Freedom to attach any device that does not interfere with the network
  Freedom to know all the terms of a service, particularly any that
  would
  affect the first three freedoms.
 
 
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  --
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  --
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 --
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 http://oegeo.wordpress.com




 --
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Re: [Talk-us] The Remap-A-Tron, Second Wave

2012-09-10 Thread Alan Millar
Yes, that fixed it.  Thanks!

- Alan






 From: Martijn van Exel m...@rtijn.org
To: Alan Millar grunthos...@yahoo.com 
Cc:  Talk-us@openstreetmap.org 
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2012 1:50 PM
Subject: Re: [Talk-us] The Remap-A-Tron, Second Wave
 
Mweh. I suck at apache configuration. Try again, please?

Martijn

On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 2:42 PM, Alan Millar grunthos...@yahoo.com wrote:
 Quite a few hours later, I'm still seeing the 403 errors on those two paths.
 I've cleared browser cache and reloaded, with no improvment  :-(


 Forbidden

 You don't have permission to access /remappingservice/count on this server.
 
 Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu) Server at lima.schaaltreinen.nl Port 80



 
 From: Martijn van Exel m...@rtijn.org
 To: Dale Puch dale.p...@gmail.com
 Cc: Charlotte Wolter techl...@techlady.com; 
 Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
 Sent: Monday, September 10, 2012 6:44 AM
 Subject: Re: [Talk-us] The Remap-A-Tron, Second Wave

 What is your browser? Can you inspect the network activity on the
 page? Are http://lima.schaaltreinen.nl/remappingservice/ and
 http://lima.schaaltreinen.nl/remappingservice/count called and do they
 return valid (geo)JSON?
 Can you try a force-reload of the page? (ctrl-shift-r if you use Firefox)
 Does anyone else still have trouble?

 On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 11:52 PM, Dale Puch dale.p...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hmm Still seems stuck on the same location for me.  I cleared my cache
 just
 to make sure that wasn't it.

 Dale


 On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 12:44 AM, Martijn van Exel m...@rtijn.org wrote:

 I repaired it - it was an apache config setting that was a little too
 strict. How'd that happen? Your guess is as good as mine. Bottom line
 is the Remap-a-tron works like a charm once more.

 Martijn

 On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 6:58 PM, Martijn van Exel m...@rtijn.org wrote:
  yea, something busted, I will look into it tonight... Hang in there
  folks - and thanks for using!
 
  Martijn
 
  On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 6:50 PM, Dale Puch dale.p...@gmail.com wrote:
  Not sure if it is just me, but this seems stuck today.  All was fine
  yesterday.
  I only get one map location and it will not move to another with 'W'
 
  A few of the deleted ways have led me to some large missing
  subdivisions and
  poor downtown type areas...  A bit of OCD kicks in and an hour+ later
  I'm
  finally done :p
 
  Dale
 
 
  On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 11:57 AM, Charlotte Wolter
  techl...@techlady.com
  wrote:
 
 
         I told Martijn the toold would be a great way to do Projects
  of
  the Month or Projects of the Week. Maybe there would be a way to
  track
  who
  did what, so we can recognize people who did a lot of work.
 
  Charlotte
 
 
 
  At 02:20 PM 9/7/2012, you wrote:
 
  A fantastic tool!  If it can be expanded to finding other issues even
  better.
 
  Dale
 
  On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 3:38 PM, Martijn van Exel m...@rtijn.org 
  wrote:
  Hi,
 
  On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 12:37 PM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com
  wrote:
   A similar query could be used to find overlapping ways which are of
   the same level and do not share a way.
   This could help with routing.
  
   There are a lot of queries like this which wouldn't be hard to do.
  
   - Serge
 
  Interestingly I was just discussing overlapping ways with Telenav
  yesterday. This will be a very useful thing to detect, but as these
  overlapping ways are not visible on the Mapnik map so the R-a-T may
  not be so useful for that. Some folks over at Telenav are developing
  a
  JOSM plugin that works in a similar way (iterating over error points
  pseudo-randomly and letting you fix them one by one) and may be
  better
  suited to these 'invisible' problems.
 
  Martijn
 
  --
  martijn van exel
  http://oegeo.wordpress.com
 
  ___
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  --
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  ___
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  Charlotte Wolter
  927 18th Street Suite A
  Santa Monica, California
  90403
  +1-310-597-4040
  techl...@techlady.com
  Skype: thetechlady
 
  The Four Internet Freedoms
  Freedom to visit any site on the Internet
  Freedom to access any content or service that is not illegal
  Freedom to attach any device that does not interfere with the network
  Freedom to know all the terms of a service, particularly any that
  would
  affect the first three freedoms.
 
 
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  --
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Re: [Talk-us] street prefixes

2012-02-18 Thread Alan Millar
On Feb 17, 2012, at 2:58 PM, Paul Johnson wrote:
 Southwest Town Center Loop West comes to mind as a great example of just 
 plain brain damaged street naming Wilsonville tends to have.

You know, I should find out if I can see Mt Hood when driving east on Southwest 
North Dakota Street  :-)

- Alan
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Re: [Talk-us] Use of ref-tag on state highways

2011-08-21 Thread Alan Millar
On Aug 21, 2011, at 11:08 AM, Nathan Edgars II wrote:
 If you don't like it, you can always find a different country to armchair-map 

That's a little harsh.  

Where do you live now?  New Jersey?  Florida?  Portland?  L.A.?   I can't keep 
track, but you sure get around to read a lot of signage.

- Alan

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Re: [Talk-us] Another day, another bad import

2011-05-01 Thread Alan Millar
On May 1, 2011, at 10:25 AM, Toby Murray wrote:
 Every time I go editing in some new place, I always find another
 reason to hate imports.

Yeah...  Every time I go editing in some new place, I always find another 
reason to hate newbies, too.

If you are looking for a reason to hate something, it's always easy to find 
them.  Human nature. 

Perhaps it's not the most constructive outlook, or discussion, to have.

- Alan


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Re: [Talk-us] Another day, another bad import

2011-05-01 Thread Alan Millar

On May 1, 2011, at 11:28 AM, Richard Weait wrote:
 I think that is different in a significant way.  It is much easier to
 fix a newbie than to fix an import. 

Not if  you start your conversation with them with I hate newbies.  That was 
my real point.

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] NHD data import question

2011-04-28 Thread Alan Millar
I've been checking some of the imported data and my general feel is that it is 
overdigitized.  I don't know if medium versus high reflects just the quality 
or 
the amount of digitization.  That would be something to check.  One could also 
just run some sort of simplification algorithm on all the data.


I definitely found this to be the case for some parts of the 
area I did (Washington County, Oregon).  


I particularly remember it on 
areas like ponds and lakes; not so much on rivers and streams.  Most of them 
were reasonable, but a fair 
number of them had way too many nodes.  


I used the JOSM simplify way quite a bit, which worked perfectly in my 
opinion.

It may be analogous to TIGER, in that NHD may have a composite dataset that got 
created in multiple ways.  It may show up more in some places than others.


- Alan


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Re: [Talk-us] Proposed cleanup: NHD rivers

2011-03-23 Thread Alan Millar
On Mar 22, 2011, at 9:17 PM, Paul Norman wrote:
 This is now complete for the area west of Portland Oregon as a test.
 
 http://www.paulnorman.ca/blog/?attachment_id=96 shows the difference.

Nice improvement!  I like it.

 About 99.8% of the data was untouched since it was imported. I checked the
 other dozen or so ways by hand.

I did that import, and did a lot of cleaning up as I was importing it.  So I 
think that probably reduced the amount of cleanup that anyone needed to do 
later.

But I definitely felt at the time that the source data and value translations 
were a little vague.  I really like the current proposal and example results.  
Looks great!

- Alan


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Re: [Talk-us] Request for community mediation

2010-10-21 Thread Alan Millar
 I've spotted the consensus.  Stop your bickering.  Either come to an
 agreement about this tagging, or ignore each other, but absolutely
 stop picking on each other.

 You and Frederick seem to be the only ones with that view who
 contributed to this thread.

As Ian said, the rest of us just haven't been stirring the pot.  I
agree with Richard and Ian.  While I like the Wikipedia concept of be
bold in editing, we don't need edit wars.

I personally have been a contentious troll myself at times, and I find
I need to back off, take a breather, and chill out some.  I think both
of you would benefit likewise, and OSM would be better off.

- Alan

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Re: [Talk-us] Fwd: Feature Proposal - RFC - Directional Prefix Suffix Indication

2010-08-24 Thread Alan Millar
On Tue, 2010-08-24 at 01:40 -0400, David ``Smith'' wrote:
   Maybe we should use signed_name=* or name:signed=* to store
 exactly what's on the sign, preserving abbreviation and prefixes where
 present? 

I found N. Temple, No Temple, and North Temple on city street signs all
within a few blocks.  Which one goes in the tag?

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Address Standard

2010-08-12 Thread Alan Millar
On Thu, 2010-08-12 at 13:57 -0600, Kevin Atkinson wrote:
 My main goal was to separate out the directional prefix because, which 
 while important for mailing, did not really belong as part of the street 
 name.  I thought I would take care of the suffix as well.

You may think it doesn't really belong as part of the street name, and
that may possibly be true in your neighborhood.  But in my neighborhood,
it definitely IS part of the street name and can't be left off, for
mailing or not.  In my part of the Portland area, SW Takena is a
completely separate unrelated street from NW Takena.  In Seattle, Forest
Ave S is completely separate and unrelated from Forest Ave SE.

So I disagree, it does belong as part of the street name.  If you have a
prefix or suffix that you think is optional, don't call it the
directional prefix or suffix that the rest of the country uses; we have
them for a reason.

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Directional Prefix/Postfix Proposal

2010-08-07 Thread Alan Millar
On Sat, 2010-08-07 at 13:15 -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:
 I vote for
 3) It's there for good reason.  If you want abbreviations, tell your map 
 renderer to garble the data for you.  Pre-garbling the data complicates 
 other usage scenarios.  Don't do it.

+1

Call me an abbreviation police if you want.  But you can make software
reliably abbreviate things; you can't make it reliably unabbreviate
things.  If you think you really need abbreviations, you need to work on
the renderer, not the tags.

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Directional Prefix/Postfix Proposal

2010-08-07 Thread Alan Millar
How about this proposal for US streets:

(1) Leave name unabbreviated

(2) Put whatever form you want of abbreviated name in name:en

Thoughts?

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Directional Prefix/Postfix Proposal

2010-08-07 Thread Alan Millar
On Sat, 2010-08-07 at 22:35 -0600, Kevin Atkinson wrote:
 For those voting +1 have you even read my original proposal on the reason I 
 want to abbreviate?

Yes.  You gave a list of reasons it would be OK, and rules people would
have to follow to make it work.  Some of the reasons I consider suspect
(such as almost always in small letters is a subjective,
regionally-variant assessment).  Other reasons were more rules and
restrictions (such as period after single-letter abbrevs.)  OSM is hard
enough for people to get consistent on already.  Keep the name tag
unabbreviated.  

You certainly CAN have all the abbreviations you want.  I'm just saying
not to put them in the name tag; put them in another tag.  I
personally don't care if it is loc_name, alt_name, name_2, name:en,
abbreviated_name, or whatever else you want to call it.  Then work on
getting the renderer to show it instead of the name tag when it
exists.  Why isn't that a good solution for you?

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] How to get college students involved?

2010-08-06 Thread Alan Millar
On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 10:51 AM, Stefan Brandle sbran...@cse.taylor.eduwrote:

I suspect that reading all available documentation might be a good
 start.  :-)


It might, but it also might get you bogged down too.  Two years into this
myself, I'm still uncovering corners of all available that I didn't know
were there :-)

I definitely endorse jumping in and trying out the parts you can figure out
(as it sounds like you're doing), while continuing to read/learn in
parallel.

For ponds in particular: one part of OSM I did not understand at first was
that areas are the same as ways; they just connect beginning to end.  So to
draw a pond, make a way around the edge of the water (presumably tracing
aerial photos) and connect the last node to the first node.  The only thing
that distinguishes an oval area from an oval track is the tagging.  Tag the
pond as natural=water, and you are done.

Be sure to keep the wiki Map_features page handy.

- Alan
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Re: [Talk-us] A Friendly Guide to 'Bots and Imports

2010-08-06 Thread Alan Millar
As I manually survey various features (POIs, some hydro, etc.), I  
usually try to merge in the data from existing imports so as to  
maintain the link (e.g. gnis:feature_id) back to the original  
database, in case we want to exchange updates with them again.


this is impossible due to the license terms,


That may be the short quick answer, but it is not the long answer.   
The link will be valuable as we figure out other ways to synchronize  
the data and/or make dual-license updates; either originated from OSM  
or from the other party like USGS.  Simple? No.  Impossible?  No.


- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Removing tiger:* tags

2010-07-29 Thread Alan Millar

On Jul 29, 2010, at 5:41 PM, Anthony wrote:

In any case, I disagree that it's better to leave information you know
to be wrong in rather than deleting it.  Perhaps that's our
fundamental disagreement.


For my part in the conversation, I *agree* with you that people  
should delete (or fix when possible) information that they know is  
wrong.


But that is not the (or my) fundamental disagreement.  My  
disagreement is on the deletion of *all* tiger: tags, because you  
don't see a need for them or you don't like the namespace or they  
don't fit your view of what/where/how they should be documented.



As for tiger:name_base, tiger:name_type, etc., if there's someone
that's using that information, we definitely should take it out of the
tiger namespace.  I'd be happy to move it from tiger:name_base=* to
name_base=* instead of deleting it, if someone is using it and would
take 5 minutes to put something up on the wiki announcing it.  If it's
useful, then it's useful for non-tiger ways as well as tiger ways.



Yes, it is useful for non-tiger ways as well.  And I will bet it will  
be useful for other countries besides the U.S. also.


I haven't seen a conclusion on what people want to see in the naming  
convention (see for example the thread at http:// 
lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/2010-April/003138.html).


Just because the conversation is ongoing, that doesn't mean you need  
to delete the data in the meantime.


- Alan


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Re: [Talk-us] United States Roadway Classification Guidelines

2010-07-27 Thread Alan Millar
  set of guidelines at:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States_Roadway_Classification_Guidelines

I read the whole page, and this is the first comprehensive narrative I've
seen that makes sense to me for mapping highway tags on US roads.  This is
a good proposal.  It looks clearly like more of a process description than
a hard definition of tag values, but I believe that is necessary for the
highway= tag in the US.

The proposal linked here suggests that mappers tag roads classified
by
 the government with certain highway= tags. 

I didn't get that interpretation from it.  The proposal qualifies govt
classes as for the first iteration, followed by further rounds of
re-evaluation and refinement.

But that doesn't mean a two lane at-grade
 highway should be coded the same in one area as a four lane limited
access
 highway in another.  

Agreed, but I didn't read such an extreme disparity in the proposal.  

In contrast, a two-lane at-grade country highway in one area *should* have
the same highway= tag value as a 4-lane urban boulevard in another area,
when neither are limited-access freeways nor residential streets but do
have similar local significance.

 We have those tags: lanes=*, width=*, etc. But there's no on the
 ground definition of importance,
 
 Yes there is. It's the highway= tag.

I think the point is that the highway tag is *not* an on-the-ground
definition, because you can't go out to every road in the US with a camera
and measuring tape and say This sign or measurement right here tells me
exactly that this road is a primary/secondary/tertiary.  Some values are
pretty clear, such as motorway and residential.  But others only have
general correlations, such as a US highway is likely or often a primary or
secondary, or a county highway is likely or often a secondary, and a big
suburban street is likely or often a tertiary.  But there is no exact
measurement of importance, so it is subjective.

But that is OK.  The highway tag doesn't NEED to be an exact on-the-ground
measurement or classification.  It needs to be a one-word summary that most
people will find useful for navigating through the area by car, bike, or
roller-skate.

Further clarification of the road, such as government classification and
detailed physical properties, should come through other tags *in addition*
to the highway tag  (ref=, lanes=, width=, surface=, access=, route
relations, etc).

 and there's nothing wrong with
 tagging correctly for the renderers.
 Yes there is. Tagging for the renderers is the first thing people in
OSM
 will tell you *not* to do.

OK, now this is getting silly.  People are told not to tag *incorrectly*
to force a particular appearance from the renderer.  Nobody is told not to
tag *correctly* when it matches what people want to see rendered.

 Classification has been
 subjective from the beginning in the US, because there is no
 consistent government-assigned classification.
 That is incorrect. There is a relatively consistent government-assigned
 classification system.

There is one US federal, fifty state, and a thousand county classification
systems, and they don't consistently define road standards across the
entire country.  Only US Interstate is pretty clear and unambiguous.  
Classification has been subjective because... means that you can't take
any government-assigned classification that we have in the US (US highway,
state highway/state route, county highway/county road), and say it *always*
reasonably determines useful values of
highway=trunk/primary/secondary/tertiary.  It can only be a good starting
guess, no more.

  The suggestion I made
 in my first reply to this thread was that we use a separate tag to
describe
 what the US government calls the way. 

I think most everyone agrees.  It is mostly reflected already as the ref=
tag or a route relation.  I don't think most people would object to
additional tagging for it.

You know, I think people are more in agreement on the whole subject than
it appears from these discussions.  The emails look like a lot of
disagreements, but perhaps it is more wording than actual disagreement on
the ideas and substance.

- Alan

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Re: [Talk-us] Oklahoma WMS?

2010-07-18 Thread Alan Millar
 Does anybody have sources for license-compatible WMS servers in 
 Oklahoma?  All I am aware of is the USGS data, which is very out of date 
 to the point of inaccuracy around Tulsa and OKC.

I've found the USGS choices confusing on how to find the right thing,
until recently.  This page appears to have the most up-to-date images:

http://seamless.usgs.gov/wms_services.php?layerid=15

According to

http://imsortho.cr.usgs.gov/WMS_Capabilities/USGS_EDC_Ortho_Oklahoma/capabilities_1_1_1.xml?REQUEST=capabilitiesSERVICE=WMS

it's 2007 for Tulsa and 2008 for OKC.

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Regional Street Centerline Solution - Minneapolis- St. Paul metro area - RFP

2010-07-13 Thread Alan Millar
 Hi talk-us: For those of you who might have skipped over this simply
 because it seems difficult to do, I ask that you at least skim over the
 sections in Exhibit 1 of the PDF. As OSM gets more attention from groups
 interested in using it, it's important to realize that the things
requested
 in this PDF aren't all that crazy and probably would make for a good
source
 of ideas for improvements to OSM's infrastructure.

I agree. It is a very interesting idea, and yes, it does sound difficult,
and also compelling for good improvements.  

In the near term, I personally have a hard time picturing the community
maintaining the detailed rigor that would be required to meet the Metro's
needs.  In particular, OSM ways can be split and combined quite easily as
needed for OSM usage, but this is a data nightmare for cross-referencing to
other data sets.

   Bunch of TIGER lines
 + combine into one OSM way with a string of TLIDs in a tag
 + move, add, delete nodes to align with misc aerial photos
 - split way at every turn restriction and speed limit change or lane
count change
 = cross-reference barf...

While I like the general idea that OSM forgoes the traditional GIS layers
in favor of the tag free-for-all, this is one of those times where the hard
segmentation of data is probably necessary.  You would need some serious
edit controls to make it effective.

Adjunct databases would seem to be necessary to maintain this.  Look at
TopOSM; sheer beauty.  Anyone notice that US address search *IS* available
on maps.cloudmade.com?  Hmmm...  (I'm hoping open mapquest does the same,
too.)

Having said all that, I *love* the idea of TIGER lines imported into OSM,
getting cleaned up, being supplied back to Metro, to be fed back to the
Census Bureau.  I hope somebody can pull this off.

This seems like an excellent project for a small OSM-savvy professional
firm, or Cloudmade, or similar. Maybe AOL wants to start a patch.com branch
in Minneapolis along with an open mapquest project.

- Alan

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[Talk-us] simple osm-merge.sh updated for multiple files

2010-07-12 Thread Alan Millar
andrzej zaborowski wrote:

 There's a dummy script at
 http://repo.or.cz/w/ump2osm.git/blob/HEAD:/osm-merge to do that (would
 need to be modified for 2 layers).  

Here is my updated version of osm-merge.sh

I also changed it to process files using double-quotes   as I get from
shp-to-osm.jar


--

#! /bin/bash
# Copyright (C) 2009  Andrzej Zaborowski
#
# Merge two .osm files without applying fancy logic (JOSM merge layers
# operation tries to be too smart and corrupts data - see bug #2245)
#
# Updated 2010-07-11 by Alan Millar - accept more than two files
# Process double-quotes

if [ $# -lt 2 ]; then
  echo Usage: $0 a.osm b.osm ... \ new.osm 2
  exit
fi

echo ?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?
echo osm version='0.6' generator='$0'

FileNumber=0

while [ $# -gt 0 ]
do

  echo File $FileNumber $1 12

  cat $1  \
  | grep -v -e 'osm' -e '?xml' -e '/osm' \
  | sed -e 's/id=-/id=-'$FileNumber'00/'  \
-e 's/ref=-/ref=-'$FileNumber'00/'

  FileNumber=` expr $FileNumber + 1 `
  shift

done

echo /osm

--

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Aeroway=Aerodrome Modifier Tags?

2010-06-15 Thread Alan Millar
 Either the US has a much greater density of airfields/airports than
 other parts of the world, 

I don't know about that.

  many airfields/airports have yet to be mapped in
 other areas of the world, 

Yes, definitely.

 or the GNIS import brought in a bunch of airfields
 that are no longer in operation.

 Has anyone noticed a bunch old airfields in their area created by the
GNIS
 import that really shouldn't be on the map.  

I don't know if it is a bunch, but they certainly are there.  I did a
little research last year, and it looks like the GNIS list came from an FAA
list.  It appeared to include such things as clearance requested and
granted for airstrips but never built, and former airstrips that have since
been replaced by new construction.

 All I know is that when I look
 at the aerial imagery where some of these airfields/airports are
supposed to
 be, all I see is a field.  Could be that it's just a grass runway?.  

Those do exist.  Whether they merit inclusion on the map is subjective.  I
think the large/medium/small size suggestion is a really good idea.

 In my
 town there's one airport that's supposedly in the middle of the golf
 course.

There are some golf resorts with their own airstrips.  But if you know the
area, and know there is a golf course there and no airstrip, by all means
feel free to fix the map and delete the obsolete airport item.

Thanks for keeping an eye out for this stuff.

- Alan

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Re: [Talk-us] Resigning in protest

2010-05-12 Thread Alan Millar

  the LWG
 has been going through peoples legitimate and illegitimate concerns for
two
 years I think it's been now. We've had lawyers checking everything at
every
 step of the way. 

I personally just want to say thank you to the license working group for
taking on the thankless job of wrangling the legal issues and trying to
plug the holes in the intellectual property issues.

I am so sick of the intellectual property parasites these days like the
patent aggregator trolls, the DMCA-weilding EULA writers, the
virtually-perpetual-copyright-extension legislators, the corporate execs
who fund these legislators and then monopolize business through it, the
@#$%$ratzle#$%!fratzin'!...@*?!!Oops, sorry, I got carried away
there.  (At least Darl McBride finally got canned; it only took how many
years and how many millions$$$? Ugh.)

Anyways, thank you to the OSM LWG and the Creative Commons and ODbL people
who use their powers for good instead of evil :-)

- Alan


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Re: [Talk-us] HI: Hawaii GIS Data

2009-12-05 Thread Alan Millar
Perhaps I'm not a typical mapper, but I don't find the existence of  
bulk
imported local data to have been particular inhibiting in my  
activity level.


I don't believe there is any one thing as a typical mapper.  But I  
certainly agree with you myself, and so do many others, as witnessed  
by many past postings to the talk-us list.


- Alan

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Re: [Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful

2009-11-20 Thread Alan Millar
On Fri, 2009-11-20 at 06:07 +, talk-us-requ...@openstreetmap.org
wrote:
 Heh, I didn't even know we had Oregon data available.  

We didn't at the time.  I checked.  Metro had (still has) restrictive
licensing, and the state did not have any clearing house at the time.   

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Karlruhe Scheme addressing ways from 2009 TIGER data

2009-11-14 Thread Alan Millar
  no one is interested to cleanup crap after a bad import. 

I am.

 tiger import was great from technical  
 point of view but didn't allow to build a community from scratch. 

I didn't want to build anything from scratch.  I'm simply not that
motivated to go out and wander everywhere mapping everything.  If we had
to start from scratch, I would not do it.

 no  
 one is motivated to fix this broken data. 

I am.  I have fixed a lot of it.  And in doing so, I have made complete,
correct map areas, much larger than I ever would have done by starting
from scratch.  

Be careful about making absolute generalized statements like everyone
and no one.

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Fixing Alignments in JOSM

2009-06-24 Thread Alan Millar
 However in reality it is a staggered junction.

 So I need to split the North-South way into two pieces and it intersects
 the East-West way in two places.

Depending on how far off the stagger is, you also may want to consider not
splitting it, but just aligning the streets with two extra nodes.  I've
come across this where the stagger is small, and feels like it can still
be considered one intersection.

Here's an example of several intersections like that within a few blocks
of each other:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=45.56144lon=-122.65675zoom=17layers=0B00FTF

Your taste may vary; it's just an alternative suggestion.

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Addresses and Tiger

2009-05-26 Thread Alan Millar
 I have been playing around with the TIGER 2008 data, which, for some of
 the counties around Atlanta seems to be much better than the old data.
 If I import it for some of the counties, though, I would like to import
 the addresses in a format that would be usable for routing software.
 The most popular schema seems to be the Karlsruhe Schema, but making use
 of it would require generating three OSM ways for each TIGER way - one
 on either side to represent the houses on that side of the road.  That
 seems unnecessarily complex, but there does not seem to be any widely
 accepted schema that places the data on the way itself.  Does anyone
 have any thoughts on that question?

I had the same thoughts on the Karlsruhe schema.  Having 3 ways for street
and address interpolation does seem complex.  But when I look at OSM areas
mapped using it, and also recall problems I've encountered with geocoding,
I think the Karlsruhe schema works pretty well.  (At least if we keep full
street information on the addressing ways, and not just the house
numbers.)

I've also been thinking about how to retrofit the addressing data to
existing areas which have already been edited and/or adjusted.  Having
multiple TLIDs per way, and then having ways split and/or recombined, will
make it difficult.  Just having multiple TLIDs per way could be hard, when
the way has been moved from its original Tiger location.  We'll have to
interpolate the interpolation points, I guess.  Hmmm

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Blame me for JOSM yellowness

2009-04-24 Thread Alan Millar
 I'd also be very happy if JOSM flipped the tag for me when I edit a
 tiger object.  It seems reasonable enough that if I'm editing something
 that we can consider it reviewed.  I certainly don't want to have to go
 flip it manually every time I go fixing some minor road details.

Good idea.  (I would personally prefer to be configurable.  Sometimes I
align a road from aerial photo but want to remind myself to actually visit
it later because something in the photo is unclear, so I leave it at
reviewed=no.)

There are two things I do currently to help in the cleanup: search and
presets.

In JOSM, you can search on the word modified and it will select all
items you modified.  Select the tiger:reviewed tag and delete it.  If any
of the modified items didn't have the tag, it doesn't hurt anything.   And
of course, you can select a rectangular region on the screen and do the
same tag edit.

I also made myself some JOSM tag presets and stick them on the main button
bar.  In each one, I set the tiger:reviewed value to blank, which will
delete the tag if it is there.  Here are some examples of mine:

presets
  item name=T_Rvw
  label text=Flag as Tiger data reviewed /
  key key=tiger:reviewed value= /
  /item
  item name=Svc_Drvwy
  label text=Flag as service=driveway /
  key key=highway value=service /
  key key=service value=driveway /
  key key=tiger:reviewed value= /
  /item
  item name=M_link
  label text=Flag as h=motorway_link,oneway=yes /
  key key=highway value=motorway_link /
  key key=oneway value=yes /
  key key=tiger:reviewed value= /
  /item

and so on.

So before uploading:

Ctrl-FmodifiedEnterClick T_RviewEnter

I wonder if I can shorten that even more?  Hmm...

- Alan





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Re: [Talk-us] GNIS Import

2009-04-11 Thread Alan Millar
 There's a copy tags feature in JOSM that doesn't seem to work. That's
 about the only way I know of right now.

Pasting tags from node to way did not work for me, as recently as just a
few weeks ago.  However, I tried it just now on the current version 1515
and it worked.

If there are tags on the way which you don't want to overwrite, just
delete those tags from the node before copying.  Not a good solution for
the general case, but for the GNIS import, the node is just going to get
deleted anyways.

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] gnis:reviewed=no map features

2009-03-29 Thread Alan Millar
 if you can put the list of features along with the corrisponding OSM
 tag to a wiki page, this would be helpful :)
 (then i can help match features  cross-check to what i have)

Unfortunately, in the case of my import for USGS Geonames items, they
don't have specific feature categories.  I'm doing subjective
classification based on the names.  In the source data, they are just
classified as building.  So to be more specific about what I am doing, I
will take a building named Oregon State Police and tag it with
amenity=police.  Unless it is named Oregon State Police Administration
Building, in which case I will tag it with amenity=public_building.  So
since I am not mapping discrete values, I don't think my list would be any
more useful on a wiki page than the exising Map_Features page.

FYI, although I'm calling this an import, mine is a semi-automated manual
process.  I'm doing this in a text editor on a file with one POI per line.
 I put in a value on each line for which tag I think it should have, which
as I said is a manual guessing process.  Lots of editor search-and-replace
type stuff.  I do have a little program to turn the text file into an osm
xml file, but other than that, it is not really automated.  I load the XML
file into JOSM, validate, and upload from there.

 i'm opting NOT to use the tag geobase:reviewed=no

Your reasoning sounds good.  I'm adding it to my load, because my tags are
so subjective.  I don't think the main USGS Geonames import needed it. 
Your plan should be fine, in my opinion.

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Court of Appeal Rejects Santa Clara County's Basemap Data Sale

2009-02-13 Thread Alan Millar
 One wonders what could be motivating the
 County to continue this very expensive resistance to complying with
 the PRA.

preach audience=choir

Probably because Santa Clara is Silicon Valley, where a great amount of
the local economy has been based on intellectual property law and issues. 
The past 20 years of software patents, digital rights management, and
other such innovations are old habits (a century in Internet time) that
are hard to break.

/preach

Fortunately it is also full of equally innovative new efforts.  Nice to
see progress!

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Tiger 2008 Data

2008-10-29 Thread Alan Millar
 does the census bureau publish any sort of a diff, or delta dataset?
 i'd think that just in terms of raw crunching that having just the
 differences from year to year would save a lot of work, both manual
 and CPU-cycles.

Not that I've seen.  What they do publish is the TLID and TZID numbers in
their data.  These are permanent segment and node numbers which do not
change from one Tiger release to the next, so you can do your own
comparisons and updates.  It also means that if you want to synchronize
with them, you need to keep and maintain their TLID and TZID numbers.

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] intertwined ways in Austin TX

2008-08-02 Thread Alan Millar
 Does anyone with knowledge of the script have time to fix things in
 Austin?

 Yes, I will take care of it.  Thanks for finding it.

Well, that was interesting.  There were about 200 braided streets in
Austin that I found and fixed.  They must really like the center island
type of street.  Let me know if you see any more.

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Portland data

2008-07-18 Thread Alan Millar
 In the US at least, I didn't think works paid for by the government could
 have a restrictive copyright claim placed on them.

In the US we have several levels of governments.  Works created by the
nation-wide federal government cannot be copyrighted.  However, that does
not apply to state, county, or city governments.  They can copyright their
works.

Portland includes this statement:

--
Copyright

The City of Portland asserts ownership of its spatial data and all its
portions. All title, ownership, and intellectual property rights which may
exist or be created with the geospatial data shall remain with the City of
Portland.
The arrangement of facts of the geographic data, the organizational
structure of the GIS databases, the coding of the GIS databases, the
format of the GIS databases and the graphic design of its maps are the
property of the City of Portland, as registered and protected by US
copyright statutes and treaties.
Recipients are restricted from displaying City spatial data on the public
Internet without express written consent from the City.
--

This can be found at

http://www.portlandonline.com/omf/index.cfm?c=28144

in the data licensing documents.

 Maybe this is data that a
 company put together and then is licensing to the city?

That is true in many situations.  Portland mentions this in their data
description, and says that data from commercial companies used by the City
isn't even available from the City.  The data that is available from the
City is still copyrighted and restricted, as mentioned above.

They have provisions for non-profit and educational use of the city GIS
data at no cost, or low cost, but it does not include the right to
redistribute the data.

Too bad :-(

- Alan



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Re: [Talk-us] Fwd: Maps of State of Wisconsin, USA

2008-04-08 Thread Alan Millar
 It looks like a lot of useful information can be gleaned from this,
 especially county, township, park, and municipality borders.

 I'm not sure if, or how, the maps could be used directly without some
 sort of PDF overlay method in JOSM, or maybe a highly speciallized PDF
 - OSM converter.

I haven't looked at the Wisconsin data, but I did do a little
experimentation with PDFs.  If the PDF contains a bitmap, you can extract
it with any number of tools, but you're stuck with tracing.

If it contains vector data, you can start to do intersting things.  You
can convert it to SVG using pstoedit.  I experimented a little using
pstoedit to create svg, and then started on a perl script to convert the
SVG to an OSM file for JOSM.  It could be made to work for small areas
where map projection would not be a problem.

But because it is just line drawing data, you lose all original metadata
about the lines.  If some other GIS-type data is available, I'd try to use
that first.

- Alan



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