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<p>Hi Jose<br>
</p>
<p>Maybe you should have a look at <a
href="https://github.com/komoot/photon">https://github.com/komoot/photon</a>
which is the go to ES based solution for OSM data (I'm not quite
sure how you missed it with the large amount of research you did,
but anyway).</p>
<p>The other bit to understand is that the design goals of
Nominatim, at least historically, were not "return a result at all
cost" but, "return a result if the object is tagged correctly",
which goes hand in hand with the target audience and goals of the
openstreetmap.org. In any case the main reason we're not running
photon on openstreetmap.org are mainly operational, not technical
(aka somebody needs to volunteer to a) integrate it in to the web
site, b) integrate it in to our chef deployment, c) provide
operational support).</p>
<p>Simon<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Am 29.05.2020 um 04:19 schrieb José
Juan Montes:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAFpiQaMxMT0rfAjbkMyqwx=9QEriXcDEYfSNWwzCxAQeXfEBEw@mail.gmail.com">
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<div>Hi all,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>This is my first message to the list so I take the
opportunity to say hello to all and thanks to the community
for the awesome software, data, and organisation.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Now to the point. At the ES comunity, we've been discussing
how difficult is to obtain useful results from OSM. Too many
times results are odd or surprising: ordering puts better
results down, sometimes it misses obvious matches entirely...
Specifically, we are referring about the search engine of OSM
front page, and other Nominatim bsaed services. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>After some anaysis, issues seem related to:<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>- stop words usage (prepositions, articles...)</div>
<div>- result scoring and ordering (a perfect match placed below
far and unrelated results)</div>
<div>- word matching when there are tildes or non-unicode chars</div>
<div>- synonyms / ignoring for some categories and common nouns
(street / road...)</div>
<div>- lack of autocompletion (helps users finding a result when
they don't quite know the exact term)</div>
<div>- lack of cross-langugae search (eg. in regions with
several official languages, people mixes street names and road
types between languages)</div>
<div>- support for typo errors</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Part of the problem is that every language requires
particular considerations, which impacts most of the points
above. So in my view, a suitable solution would need to have
good i18n support bottom up.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>We think that other communities (language-wise) may be
hitting the same issues according to Github issues. I list
some references at the bottom, but they don't seem to get much
attention.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Ultimately, the technology stack Nominatim is built upon is
not state of the art. I have done a quick test with
Elasticsearch and a simple default installation with naive
data loading already produces decent results. I later found
that alternative search engines exist, for example "Pelias",
which are implemented on top of newer technologies, and their
demo seems to work fine... </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Has any alternative to the current geocoder been tested?
What would it take for this to be improved? If alternatives
exist, can the search engine at the front page be changed? or
provide options so users can choose their preferred search
engine? maybe even from specialized local/themed search
providers? Perhaps something like that would pave the way for
alternative search software and services, and foster
innovation. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Cheers!</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Refs:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>- <a
href="https://github.com/osm-search/Nominatim/issues/1811"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://github.com/osm-search/Nominatim/issues/1811</a></div>
<div>- <a
href="https://github.com/osm-search/Nominatim/issues/333"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://github.com/osm-search/Nominatim/issues/333</a></div>
<div>- <a
href="https://github.com/osm-search/Nominatim/issues/1208"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://github.com/osm-search/Nominatim/issues/1208</a></div>
<div>- <a
href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Search_engines"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Search_engines</a><br>
</div>
<div>- source code of my tests: <a
href="https://github.com/jjmontesl/cubetl/tree/master/examples/osm"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://github.com/jjmontesl/cubetl/tree/master/examples/osm</a><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<br clear="all">
<div>
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"
data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Jose Juan Montes</div>
</div>
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"
data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><br>
</div>
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<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">_______________________________________________
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