[OSM-dev] Thoughts on an enhanced GPX api

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2009/7/28 Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net>:
>
> Frederik Ramm wrote:
>> To be honest, I think that GPS traces are horribly overrated and
>> will only further diminish in importance for OSM. I wouldn't spend
>> a lot of time reinventing anything to do with GPS traces.
>
> Why's that?
>
> For those of you in countries with NMAs that release things, or in urban
> areas where there's satellite imagery, maybe you can do without them. But in
> 95% of the British land mass there is no other way of mapping.

well, once you have inserted the streets, you can easily add details
just by knowing the place, add tags and relations to existent
geometry, add footways and other objects by knowing the proportions
and relative position rather than measuring with gps which doesn't
give you an accurate position in densly built up areas. But I agree
that we're (at least in Italy) far from the point of gps being useless
;-)

cheers,
Martin