[OSM-dev] OSM Notes API, Issue Tracking

Adam Boardman osm-dev at adamboardman.co.uk
Thu Apr 24 11:55:32 BST 2008


> I'm not sure if Adam Boardman, who's been doing the notesapi work
> on the rails code, is reading this or has anything to add?

Yep, just noticed this thread.

I like the idea of one central notes store, it definately needs the idea 
of to action and done/archived status, its for short term corrections. I 
have no objection to renaming it - I'd have called it annotations but 
someone else had started a previous thread calling it notes.

I see it being used by random people visiting the site (or other apps 
that use OSM data), of a free form text saying anything associated with 
a location (so we know where to look when reading it). The main site 
public interface could offer a series of options (as one example 
implementation already does) but this would be converted to text in the 
db. These would not necesarily be associated with a particular OSM user, 
and would likely be actioned by someone other than the reporter.

I also see it being used by OSM mappers (such as myself) using mobile 
devices where you visit the end of a road, and annotate it with 'Road 
Name' at each end, or postbox/church/footpath/road/etc. These would be 
uploaded after a mapping trip associated with the OSM user (perhaps 
along with the gpx trail) and then most likely processed by the same 
user (since they know how far from the road the item was). Once 
processed they would be used in the same way as gpx trails as an 
evidence store incase of litigation.

In TomH's offlist email he suggested adding the active notes to the main 
API map call, we certainly could do that as a way of exposing the active 
notes to API users.

The other querys were about parsing GPX files for waypoints and saving 
named ones to the notes db. In particular the notion that you can end up 
with things other than what you want as waypoints in gpx files. I dont 
know the best way of working on that, perhaps an extra tickbox when 
uploading a gpx file to indicate that the waypoints in this file are 
from a clean source and relivant to mapping?

Cheers,

Adam.




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