[HOT] The status of iD in HOT contexts/projects

Sun Sep 29 10:34:44 UTC 2013

Hi Robert/All,

I wanted to mention we'll be using iD as well for the mapping begin
this week in Haiphong. It is currently the only OSM editor with decent
Vietnamese support. I'm a bit concerned about conflicts during our
training, but intend to use the Tasking Manager to try to avoid that.

Best,

-Kate

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 4:21 PM, Banick, Robert
<Robert.Banick at redcross.org> wrote:
> Hi John et al.,
>
> Thanks for the update!
>
> Acknowledged that imagery may have to wait a while. C'est la vie — I know
> you all are kept quite busy as things are.
>
> Regarding conflict detection, I think myself, Kareem Ahmed, and the
> wonderful folks at the Kathmandu Living Labs will have a lot more
> constructive feedback after our training this week. We'll keep a running log
> of issues with all the softwares we're using and report back regarding the
> highest priority fixes for iD. Overall I agree that a full blown versioning
> editor is beyond scope for iD — we just need something a little more
> user-friendly than the current error messages.
>
> Many thanks to Simon and the Operations Working Group for their GPX /
> Waypoints help!
>
> Cheers,
> Robert
>
>
> Robert Banick | GIS Coordinator | International Services | Ì American Red
> Cross
>
> 2025 E Street NW, Washington, DC 20006
>
> Tel 202-303-5017 | Cell 202-805-3679 | Skype robert.banick
>
>
> From: John Firebaugh <john.firebaugh at gmail.com>
> Date: Thursday, September 26, 2013 11:35 PM
> To: Robert Banick <robert.banick at redcross.org>
> Cc: "kathleen.danielson at gmail.com" <kathleen.danielson at gmail.com>, william
> skora <skorasaurus at gmail.com>, "hot at openstreetmap.org"
> <hot at openstreetmap.org>, Tom MacWright <tom at macwright.org>, Simon Johnson
> <SJohnson at redcross.org.uk>
>
> Subject: Re: [HOT] The status of iD in HOT contexts/projects
>
> Will, Robert,
>
> Thanks very much for the thoughtful feedback. I've mentally updated some
> priorities, and can give you a status update on a few of the items you
> mentioned:
>
> - GPS layer: see
> https://github.com/systemed/iD/issues/277#issuecomment-25187237
> - Waypoint support in GPX traces: thanks to Simon Johnson's work, this will
> be included in 1.2.0, which I've just submitted to OSM.org.
> - Imagery offset database: this is another feature where a pull request
> would greatly expedite things. It's on my radar, but not a top priority.
> - Conflict detection: this could range from 'periodic preemptive check for
> new data', which might be fairly simple to implement, to 'full blown
> detection and resolution', which is very complex and likely out of scope
> entirely for iD. It would be helpful if you could add your opinion on what
> the necessary scope is and ideas for specific changes to the issue.
>
> cheers,
> John
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 8:06 AM, Banick, Robert <Robert.Banick at redcross.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Will,
>>
>> Super helpful feedback. I agree with your specific points but not with the
>> overall thrust of your argument. Given that I'm about to conduct a training
>> next week using iD, I hope I'm right :)
>>
>> Some constructive responses:
>>
>> Simon Johnson of the British Red Cross has been working on the GPX point
>> layer since last week and has submitted a pull request to have it fixed. I'm
>> not sure what the status of that pull request is but selfishly hope that
>> it's incorporated by next week. Tom, John et al, any ETA on that?
>>
>> I'm planning on using the tasking manager to organize the iD tracing, with
>> the hope that we can avoid conflicts this way. I agree that conflict
>> resolution is fairly poor and hope to get around it that way. Any experience
>> on your end doing this?
>>
>> I never plan on relying on Bing anyways, since it's too fuzzy in many
>> rural areas of the developing world to be of any use. That's not the fault
>> of the iD team of course, just the reality of imagery availability in its
>> current state.
>>
>> Robert
>>
>> Robert Banick | Field GIS Coordinator | International Services | Ì
>> American Red Cross
>>
>> 2025 E Street NW, Washington, DC 20006
>>
>>
>> From: "kathleen.danielson at gmail.com" <kathleen.danielson at gmail.com>
>> Date: Tuesday, September 24, 2013 8:49 AM
>> To: william skora <skorasaurus at gmail.com>
>> Cc: John Firebaugh <john.firebaugh at gmail.com>, "hot at openstreetmap.org"
>> <hot at openstreetmap.org>, Tom MacWright <tom at macwright.org>
>> Subject: Re: [HOT] The status of iD in HOT contexts/projects
>>
>> Great example of constructive feedback, Will. I'm sure that Tom, John, and
>> team really appreciate it!
>>
>> On Sep 23, 2013 11:00 PM, "Will Skora" <skorasaurus at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Robert Soden mentioned the interest of using iD for OSM-related
>>> trainings during today's HOT tech chat. While in Northern Haiti for
>>> the CAP103 project in May-June 2013, a handful of the advanced mappers
>>> in Northern Haiti had learned about iD and wanted to learn how to use
>>> it, and I attempted to give 2-3 informal brief walkthroughs.
>>> afterwards, I wrote my experiences about it and then forgot to share
>>> them with the HOT community until now and thought it would be useful
>>> to share since we haven't discussed the use of iD in HOT contexts.
>>>
>>> First off, I truly admire the work done for iD. Its development has
>>> been rapid, the developers are very friendly, humble, and responsive,
>>> they set an example for the OSM developers' community. I understand
>>> that iD developers have other competiting priorities to help improve
>>> the editor but there's several issues that I've experienced and as a
>>> result, would really hesitate to use iD in HOT contexts where these
>>> issues would be appear.
>>>
>>> - Lack of a GPS layer
>>>  - you can currently upload a single GPS track to display in the
>>> background, but you are not yet able to load the entire background of
>>> GPS traces from OSM of a given area.
>>>  https://github.com/systemed/iD/issues/277
>>>  Although the quantity and quality of imagery sources available has
>>> increased in recent years, there's still a handful of areas in the
>>> world where there's no traceable imagery available, often in areas
>>> where HOT has operated . In these instances, mappers still have to
>>> rely solely on GPX points and GPS layers to map.
>>>
>>> - Lack of waypoint support in GPX traces
>>> https://github.com/systemed/iD/issues/1557
>>>  As we often take waypoints as we often take GPS traces and write down
>>> information that describes the area associated with the corresponding
>>> waypoint.
>>>
>>>  - In some areas, bing imagery is 'offset' - a road traced with bing,
>>> for example, may be 30 or 50 meters away from where it is on the
>>> ground. To fix this, 'offsetting the imagery' is necessary. At the
>>> moment, iD has the capability to adjust imagery, but the adjustment
>>> must be manually done each time a user opens iD to edit OSM.
>>> Secondly, without a GPS trace layer (mentioned above), a user does not
>>> know whether the data already mapped to OSM are currently offset or
>>> not. This is a bit problematic to newer OSM users who may move data,
>>> believing that it should match up with bing imagery.
>>>  https://github.com/systemed/iD/issues/1124
>>>
>>>  - conflict detection
>>>   - no way to detect conflicts. This is problematic when there are
>>> mapping parties and mappers are editing in areas very close to each
>>> and you may be editing the same ways as your fellow users.
>>>   https://github.com/systemed/iD/issues/1053
>>>
>>> At the moment, iD is a great editor but the above issues can be quite
>>> problematic in some HOT contexts (that don't have great imagery for
>>> example) and would be considered dealbreakers in these HOT
>>> environments.
>>>
>>> Given the rapid development of iD, we may even have to reasses it in
>>> just a few months. Until then, we should keep iD on the back burner.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Will
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> HOT mailing list
>>> HOT at openstreetmap.org
>>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
>
>
>
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