[OSM-dev] OSM API Improvements work

[Jochen Topf]

On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 03:59:59AM +0200, Stefan Keller wrote:
> @Jochen: taginfo is a very valuable service which I use regularly. But
> it seems to me that taginfo is rather a browsing tool and has not been
> designed to return key-value suggestions given a single search term,
> right?
> 
> Taginfo has strong linking capabilities but wants you rather to know
> the key or the value term in advance. For example: A search for
> "castle" returns castle_type (instead of historic=castle, see
> http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/search?q=castle ). A search for
> "monastery" (or church) it returns the same term again (instead of
> place_of_worship=*). And seaching in non-english language is even
> worse.

Of course taginfo also returns historic=castle. Click on the "Value" tab on the
results page to see it. The way search results are displayed is not really
great. Ideas or patches to improve this are welcome.

> That's why I suggested something I called "TagFinder". You can look at
> the showcase here http://openpoimap.ch/tagfinder/search?q=Schloss .
> And I'm giving a talk about how ony could add value to taginfo
> statistics at the OGRS conference coming soon http://www.ogrs2012.org/
> .
> 
> So, taginfo is rather close to that "simple search with tag suggestion
> feature". In fact, you know that I suggested a patch for such an API -
> which you rejected at this time. I would still love to see taginfo
> enhanced with this feature (even if i would turn something like
> TagFinder obsolete).

Yes, we have been over this a few times... Your suggested patch wasn't a
good solution in my opinion and I explained how it could be done better.
But you declared my solution to be impossible and didn't try it.

Just to get you off my back I spent a few hours today and have implemented a
minimal solution now. It is far from perfect, but maybe somebody wants to
take it up and improve on it. There are many possible improvements such as
adding a thesaurus, word stemming, better detection which words might be
relevant, adding more word sources etc.

There is a new "Full text" tab now on the search results page which shows tags
that might be applicable by searching through the wiki pages for all the tags.
If your search for "Schloss" for instance it will find "historic=castle" and
"historic=archaeological_site", and also "barrier=fence" and
"amenity=bicycle_parking" ("Schloss" in German means "castle", but can also
mean "lock") and some other stuff. Or try "fire" to see not only
"amenity=fire_hydrant" etc. but also "man_made=cutline" and
"tourism=camp_site".

As I said this is very very basic, but it is actually usable and could be
useful. I don't have the time right now to improve it, so if nobody takes it up
it will stay like this for the forseeable future.

Jochen
-- 
Jochen Topf  jochen at remote.org  http://www.remote.org/jochen/  +49-721-388298