[Openstreetmap] How do we handle large amount of GPS points?

Richard Fairhurst richard at systemeD.net
Mon Nov 22 21:16:27 GMT 2004


On 21 Nov 2004, at 23:35, SteveC wrote:

> * Jo Walsh (jo at frot.org) wrote:
>> Schuyler had a nice out-of-the-blue email from Richard at
>> geowiki.co.uk today, saying more or less, 'we're still happily hacking
>> on it, but hand-crafting in illustrator is a PITA, we are thinking
>> about more heavy GIS and about track-sharing services' of the sort
>> being talked here... it would be good to get them in the loop as
>> they've done a lot of good work on lines for major UK road systems 
>> and on
>> cartographic presentation.
>
> sweet, cc'd.

Guess I probably ought to join the list then...

Brief introduction: I'm one of a group of people responsible for 
thinking up geowiki.com/.co.uk, and the person who did most of the 
(bad) coding/(passable) design on the current implementation. 
Essentially, it's a map you can annotate, built from GPS data we've 
gathered. Between three or four of us, we've picked up a lot of main 
roads plus a handful of usable streetmaps (bits of London, Cambridge, 
Oxford, Reading, Birmingham, etc.).

The code's awaiting a major rewrite, because at present we convert the 
GPS tracks to a PostScript file using a Perl script, then add that to a 
master map in Illustrator. Rasterising this takes ages and limits you 
to certain scales. Best solution so far is Ming (ming.sourceforge.net) 
- a hugely useful library that enables you to produce SWFs from Perl, 
PHP, Python or whatever.

At the same time, I'm putting together a CD-ROM edition of the Ordnance 
Survey's New Popular Edition, the 1in maps from the 1940s - and hence 
the only edition to be wholly out of copyright. I'm getting them 
scanned this week. The scale means they're not a lot of use for London, 
but very handy for rural areas.

Incidentally, the biggest number of hits at geowiki.co.uk come from 
users at ordsvy.gov.uk... draw your own conclusions. :-)

Anyway, really keen to help on projects like this. Look forward to 
reading more.

cheers
Richard
www.systemeD.net





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