[OSM-dev] {To All} Re: OSM Data Question from FireGirl

[Fire Girl]

Ah very good Brett, Jason and all :) I think I am loaded for bear with
many good ideas to try out tomorrow.  Below I typed some more thoughts...
and concluded with a SIMPLE QUESTION and BIG QUESTION.  Hopefully those
will really help to crystallize my thinking.

but, the one thing which I am throughly still confused about, ... & maybe
someone can demonstrate further, to help imortalize into my thinking,
perhaps by way through demonstration of a very small OSM file for me to
play with using one of the Websites out there that can generate it....
mainly I am confuzed on exactly how to come up with the Bounding Box
coordinates?

such as,
bbox=-0.5,51.3,-0.4,51.4

For instance, that info could be pushed into some properly configured API
to generate a OSM data file based on that... right?  Those numbers
represent West Edge, South Edge, East Edge and North Edge in this order
(I hope).  From what I have researched.

But I do better with visual examples.  So.... to help be visually
understand this better, the wherefores of that,... could someone please
demonstrate using any OSM Website out there, or Google Maps, or anything
that comes up with that.... how to get these four numbers logically based
on some geographic area (something not big)? :)  My goal: I hope before I
try to get a API up and running, is to see a very small OSM file
generated from someone elses API... just to see what I get.

So my two hopeful questions:

SIMPLE QUESTION:

Separately, is there any simplified Database out there that might have
more localized destinations pre-formatted?

BIG QUESTION:

Big Question: These Bounding Box numbers....as Brett pointed out are just
latitude/longitude coordinates.  If I have a  Latitude & Longitude point
- for instance:

Kaneohe Bay
21° 27' N 
157° 46' W

(which by the way is a nice place in Hawaii) ..... for that to become a
properly formed BBOX spec, what could I do to extrapolate that?  Is there
any logic that would say, OK, if I have a basic Lat/Long point on a map,
and want 5 miles of geographic space around it .... is there some math
that will give me that BBOX spec?  This is my big question of the hour.

Have a very nice evening and rest up.
Best wishes, FireGirl.

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