[OSM-newbies] Conversational gambit: New to OSM?

[Chris Hunter]

On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 11:18 PM, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:

> Hi newbies list,
>
> Are you new to OpenStreetMap?  Here are some questions as conversation
> starters.  All are optional.
>
> 1. What first brought your attention to OSM?  A magazine article?  A
> web site interview?  SteveC's FLOSS Weekly interview?
>
> Stumbled across the site while trying to find an app that would compile
ESRI shapefiles into Garmin IMGs


> 2. What made you decide to get involved and join this list?
>
> Information overload & conflicting documentation on a lot of the tools


> 3. What is the trickiest part about starting with OSM, for you?  Can
> you suggest how to make this tricky thing less-tricky?
>
> Learning the tools.  I'd tried Potlatch, but found its undo feature
frequently undid everything instead of just the last change I tried.  I like
JOSM, but even now after 4 months using it, I still have trouble finding
things.

Some tags/features have to be manually entered into either JOSM or Potlatch,
while others are built-in.  Maybe something could be done in the WIKI to
compile all keys into a settings file that either tool could download either
on startup or on demand.

I still haven't figured out how to roll the Garmin IMG files the way I
wanted them despite searching the WIKI for mkgmap documentation.  Could
someone point me to a good howto.

Ideally, I'd love to see a UI (like JOSM) that can open files of any format
without having to massage the data in GPSbabel/shp2osm/etc..., allow you to
download/upload changes to the server, and let you save to
Garmin/TomTom/Lowrance/etc... from a single location.


> Or, of course, feel free to post your questions about beginning to
> contribute data to OpenStreetMap.
>
> _______________________________________________
> newbies mailing list
> newbies at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/newbies
>
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