[OSM-dev] Thoughts on an enhanced GPX api

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason avarab at gmail.com
Tue Jul 28 13:17:06 BST 2009


On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 11:43 AM, René Affourtit<raffourtit at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 12:33 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð
> Bjarmason<avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have a lot of GPX tracks that could be improved, e.g. by deleting
>> point clouds. I'd like to edit them using normal OSM tools, have those
>> edits versioned (so they can be rolled back), and have other users do
>> those fixes for me. Just like with the OSM data I upload.
>
> In my opinion traces should be cleaned up before being uploaded,
> however I confess that I often don't do that :-)

I currently have 61 MB of uploaded traces and 22 MB of un-uploaded
ones. Some of those 61 MB have point clouds & other unoptimal
features. If I was really particular about what I'd upload that ratio
would be closer to 22 MB uploaded & 61 un-uploaded because I simply
can't be bothered to do all that post-processing.

Which is why I'd like to have infrastructure for doing that
collaboratively so that I can offload the task to someone who's more
keen to do it :)

Currently when I'm editing data based on my traces I:

* Upload my GPX trace to the site
* Open JOSM with my *local* trace (since I can only get a point cloud
from the site
* Edit data based on it and cringe when I see things like point
clouds, but I don't fix them because I can't be bothered to:

* Open another program to edit my GPX tracks (I know about the EditGPX
plugin b.t.w.)
* Go to the OSM website -> delete my track -> re-upload it (&
copy/paste all the track info because there's no "replace track"
feature)

In fact I often skip the first step and upload my tracks months later
when I can get to it. That's because there's no direct benefit for my
to upload my tracks to the site at all if I'm using on offline editor.
The only advantage is to make it available for others for later
reference & to use osm.org as a free host for GPX tracks.

I often see users who are using JOSM or another offline editor whose
edits suggest that they're editing things based on GPX tracks even
though they have no tracks uploaded, unsurprisingly as they probably
can't see the how it benefits them.

Instead what I'd like the workflow outlined above to look like is:

* Upload my track to OSM site
* Open JOSM -> My uploaded tracks -> Download

Then I'd get a view with the OSM data in the foreground and my trace
in the background. When I'd edit the OSM data I could easily pop into
the GPX layer and do things like delete point clouds & uplod them with
a message "deleted some useless point cloud points" (which would show
up in the revision log for the track).

When editing maybe I'd see tracks from user xxyyzz notice that his
track track partly goes across a way which I just surveyed s being
demolished. I could then pop in and edit that as easily as a normal
OSM way and add a tag indicating that that segment of xxyyzz's covers
a feature that doesn't exist anymore. Although the rest of it is
presumably OK.




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