I'm taking bets on whether this thread will have more replies than the "abandoned railroads" (100+ and still going strong!) and win the prize for the Biggest Waste of Time in OSM for 2015.
YES WE CAN('T) Paweł On Thu, Aug 20, 2015, at 03:16, Jóhannes Birgir Jensson wrote: > For those that did not check on Mateusz Konieczny diary entries[1], > postings to this mailing list and github discussions then the Proposed > Great Colour Shift might come as a surprise if it is implemented. > > According to the github discussion there is an "overwhelming consensus" > [2] on moving from current rainbow colour scheme for roads to a > red-yellow only scheme. I am unsure of where this overwhelming consensus > formed because I never saw it on this mailing list nor on talk-dev nor > on announcements, I admit to be an infrequent IRC user but I didn't see > this overwhelming consensus there and so far no one has been able to > tell me where it formed or where I can find it. > > The design goal seems straight forward, to discontinue green and blue > for roads and move to red and reddish. For this to happen the decision > was made to shift current primary, secondary and tertiary colours > "upwards" so primary is now the colour of secondary and secondary the > colour of tertiary. Leaving tertiary white. > > Tertiary instead gets to be wider than residential and unclassified > roads, but to be able to spot that you need to have it next to them to > see which is the wider one. > > This one simple change of bleaching tertiary however is something I find > to be a great hindrance to mapping efforts, particularly in rural areas > where the roads are isolated and panning over the map, wether in iD or > using default tiles. Currently it is easy to spot tertiary roads snaking > through valleys and over vast desert plains, they are yellow and the non > tertiary roads are white. Tertiary is significant there as it denotes > the roads between the villages and towns that are often unpaved but > still the most important, even the only, road. Lesser white colours > imply the roads not being between larger settlements although they could > lead to hamlets. The guidelines for mapping in Africa state thus. > > Removing the colour from tertiary makes all mapping that much harder to > verify and quality check. Currently it is easy to see if a tertiary road > is broken with a white unclassified bridge, not so in the proposed Great > Colour Shift. > > Mateusz has been forthcoming with all changes and done sterling work in > displaying different areas and how they will look. But he acknowledges > that this change is not beneficial everywhere on the map and now has a > disclaimer: > > "Among potential problems are that it is now harder to recognise road > type of given road, especially in situation where there is no > possibility to compare it with other road types. > Such significant change will be confusing for current users of this > style. > UK color coding of roads is well known for many people, for them a new > style - even assuming that it would be intuitive for them - will be less > useful.)" > > > The question really arises if this change is beneficial or not for the > project. Many hours have gone into it and doing CartoCSS on all these > zoom levels is not trivial. But this is a major shift on the front page > of our website, a blow to those who use the default tiles through uMap > or similarly and depend on the UK rainbow road style and makes life > harder for mappers to visually confirm the type of road. > > Should this be a new, alternative style instead? > > > [1] http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Mateusz%20Konieczny/diary/35586 > [2] > https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/pull/1736#issuecomment-130592532 > > _______________________________________________ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk