[OSM-dev] Feasibility of an 'in the field' mobile editing app?

[Nick Whitelegg]

>Sounds nice, but there's one problem: creating OSM ways automatically 
>from GPS data (without user editing) is not a good idea, for several 
>reasons:
>- GPS (in)precission: it is a good practice to cover certain path 
>several times before actually creating a way

Do many of us actually do that though? I have to admit I don't, as it 
would simply take more time than I have available. In the countryside in 
particular (which is what I was thinking of), one needn't be that bothered 
about pixel-precision accuracy anyway. And in the town where I live, I 
find the streets I've created generally match up well with the Yahoo! 
imagery.

>- Depending on your GPS tracking settings, you could end up with a lot 
>of unnecessary OSM nodes (while standing still, for example). This could 
>be fixed by some data cleaning SW, I suppose, but it should be taken 
>into account.

The idea was to use some sort of path simplification algorithm to avoid 
this happening.

Nick