[OSM-dev] "See Data", a UI for browsing OSM data in the main map

[Richard Duivenvoorde]

Sebastian Spaeth wrote:
 > Lauri Hahne wrote:
 >>     This is a great way which allows newcomers to fix up their 
street name
 > b) Potlatch is still too much of a learning curve for these users.
 > Things look differently there. If you can click *on the map* and enter
 > the street name, it's much easier, I think.

partly related to this, that is, we want 'newcomers' or non-osm-ers to 
be able to say "this part of the map is not ok yet".
I'm building some prototype for a simple issuetracker for osm:
http://www.duif.net/osmfoutje

It's a simple php/postgis/openlayers webapp in which people can zoom to 
their neighborhood and draw some box and add a description for what's 
wrong or missing...
Here in the Netherlands, we have a nice map already, but there are new 
build-areas which are not mapped yet, eg:
http://www.duif.net/osmfoutje/issue.php?zoom=16&lat=52.42725&lon=4.66483&layers=B000000FTT&id=89
An osm'er can retrieve data in josm using that url also :-)

These 'issues' (permalinks, centerpoint etc) are stored in postgis, so 
using a simple php script we can get these issues out of it as a 
rss-feed (xy point defined by centre of permalink-map, or centre of 
polygon drawn). This rss-feed-layer can be seen on the index page also.
First the idea was to let people define 'area's' so they can get a feed 
from their own area, but I think that's not necessary anymore, if the 
bbox feed is working...

When you click on an issue, you come to an issue-page, seeing the 
osm-map and 3 other maps to see differences/satellite data etc. The idea 
is that it's like a simple issuetracker, people can add comments to it, 
fix it or close the issue.

I really like the idea of georss, because for example given
http://www.duif.net/osmfoutje/rss.php?area=7
or
http://www.duif.net/osmfoutje/rss.php?bbox=480160.442246,6769018.490776,633034.465684,6921892.51421
or
http://www.duif.net/osmfoutje/rss.php?email=richard@duif.net

you can see and track the issues you're interested in...

by reprojecting stuff to epsg:4326, eg
http://www.duif.net/osmfoutje/rss.php?area=7&epsg=4326
you can even look at the issues on 'the other map' (put the feed url in 
the search box of googlemaps).

It's work in progress, and I'm not sure if it will scale to millions of 
issues (you can always limit the number of issues retrieved in the feed 
(eg only the last 200 or so, or retrieve new issues with every new 
scale-level..).

But let me know if it's interesting enough to go further


Regards,
Richard Duivenvoorde