[OSM-dev] Scale markings on maps

[andrzej zaborowski]

2009/10/6 John Smith <deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com>:
> 2009/10/6 John Robert Peterson <jrp.crs at gmail.com>:
>> Has there been a recent change with the removal of the scale makings from
>> the bottom of the map display? Or is it my chaine that's causing it?
>>
>> On a very closly related matter, is there any way to adjust things so that a
>> decent scale is displayed -- so often I find that I want to know the
>> distance between 2 points that are 3/4 of the width of the screen appart --
>> I would have to zoom out 2-3 zoom levels and use the tiny scale that was
>> shown by default to estemate. If there was some address bar argument that
>> woudl allow me to display a prper scale that stretched over the whole bottom
>> of the map, I'd be a lot more happy. This could even be an option in the
>> layers menu.
>>
>> I find that good scale markings are very important when reading a map.
>
> It was removed because it wasn't acurate if you change latitude, but
> even a rough scale is more useful than no scale.

Also it's one of those things that should be really easy to fix
instead of removing the bar completely, so maybe it's the task of the
first person who has a need for it to fix it and then open a trac
ticket saying that it can be added back.

The scale bar should only be displayed at higher zoom levels, say z >
6 because there the distance between the two lower corners of the
screen and two upper corners is only minimally different, at some
point the difference becomes smaller than the pixel size.  And it
should resize as you pan north & south.

Cheers