[OSM-newbies] Updating OSM??

[James Ewen]

On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Bob Maloney <maloneybob at gmail.com> wrote:

> First, I did a little better today, details will follow.

Progress is good!

> Second, I still do not understand how to use newbies at openstreetmap.org. I am
> using THUNDERBIRD ro run GMAIL.

Okay, so it sounds like you are pulling your email from GMAIL onto
your local machine using POP via Thunderbird.

> I am receiving newbies at openstreetmap.org as
> a daily summary. I do not get individual messages. If I try to REPLY or
> REPLY ALL to your message, THUNDERBIRD generates a reply to the first
> message in the daily summary. Should I switch to getting each message
> separately? I do prefer getting all the messages together.

Umm, Thunderbird should probably be trying to reply to the whole daily
digest message. That usually means that the message subject will get
changed. On mailing reflectors, when you have a series of messages all
about the same subject, using the same subject line in the header, it
is called a thread. When you go through the archived messages, you can
easily follow a conversation even if there were multiple conversations
taking place at the same time on the reflector. By following the
thread, one can read the initial message and all of the replies quite
easily.

With you responding to the daily digest, and changing the subject line
of the response, this thread is being broken into many sub-threads. We
are still communicating, but to be able to follow this conversation in
the archive, it could be a little tough.

Daily digest mode is usually used by people that don't want every
email message popping up in front of them each time someone sends a
message. They want to sit down in the lazyboy at home in the evening,
and "read the news". If you're going to be an active participant in a
conversation, getting each message as it is sent might be better. You
can switch between digest and individual messages at any time by
changing your preferences.

> Once more I copied your message, pasted it into a new message and am sending
> the new message to James Ewen and nwebies at openstreetmap.org.

Yup, I get two copies, although Gmail only shows me one copy... you
can just send to newbies, and I'll get a copy because I subscribe to
the newbies list. Think of the list as a bulletin board... each time
you send a message to the list, your message gets posted on the
bulletin board. I'm nosey, so everytime a new message gets posted, my
Blackberry beeps at me, and I have a look to see what just got posted.
In the daily digest mode, you wander by the bulletin board at the end
of the day, and read all the new messages that have been posted. By
sending me a message at my email address, it's like you are making a
photocopy of the message you are posting on the bulletin board, and
dropping it in my mail box. I see your message twice.


> MY REPLY: Regarding panning, I kept trying to pan the same way I panned in
> the VIEW mode. I never thought of using the keyboard. I have panning down
> now with no problem.

Check out the online help in Potlatch. Down in the bottom left of the
screen. Especially the last page, the quick reference where it shows
you keyboard shortcuts. Think of editing like driving a car. I have my
right hand on the wheel (mouse), and my left hand is busy doing other
things like turning on the signal light (panning the screen), or
whatever.

The keyboard shortcuts let you keep pointing and clicking, and not
having to stop doing that to select something different. You can stop
in the middle of adding nodes to a way, and fiddle around with menus
and such. All you need to do to continue is to click on an end node,
and keep on adding nodes to the way. When you get the keyboard
shortcuts memorized (probably not all, but the common ones), you'll be
able to edit like a speed demon.


> My REPLY: I think I was probably double clicking and the editor thought I
> was closing the way. Today, I managed to complete 2 lakes by going very
> slowly and making sure the points were not too close together.

I see Nawahunta is in there... you did a very nice job of colouring
within the lines this time. A real quality job!


> What type of computer are you running? Windows, Mac, Unix? What
> browser? I'm trying to figure out why it's so hard for you to be able
> to point and click.
> MY REPLY: For what its worth, I am using CHROME as a browser under WINDOWS
> XP.

Okay, I think we can dispense with that line... you're not running
anything weird that was causing problems, we just have to get you up
to speed on the editing process. I run Chrome on XP as well.


> I have tried to edit and load Lake Nawahunta and Turkey Hill Pond. I had no
> problem tracing the lakes and uploading them.

I see the lakes..

> I really do not understand how
> associate a tag with the way the way characteristics. With Nawahunta. I
> waited until the system had  finished editing the lake track and then tried
> to add a tag. With Turkey Hill Pond, I tried to add the tag with the initial
> upload.

Okay, some terminology... you're editing the ways, not the system.

What happens when you hit the edit tab, is that Potlatch (the online
editor starts up). Potlatch grabs the raw data for the area that you
are looking at. If you select edit with save, then Potlatch will store
all of your edits locally until you tell it to send your edits to the
main database (Save). If you work in live mode, then every thing you
do gets saved to the database as you make the edit. Working offline is
probably better if you're learning as it's easier to close the editor
and loose your edits as a way of saying "Oops I didn't mean to delete
the world!". If you're working in live mode you can muck things up
easier. (We can still recover things that get mucked up though).

So, you are editing, and you can modify to your heart's content. You
can upload, and then continue editing if you like as well.

Adding a tag is pretty easy. Knowing which tag to add is a little
harder. Remember that page link I sent called Map Features? It had a
big list of keys and values. A key is simply a main group, where a
value defines the member of that group. A major key group is
"highway". Values in the highway group can be things like motorway,
secondary, tertiary, residential, footpath. So, you can see that all
of the values are simply types of highways.

To tell OSM that you want to make the area you have enclosed into a
lake, you have to choose the key group "natural", and a value of
"lake". Where it gets confusing is that sometimes you'll see this
written as natural:lake. In Potlatch you'll see the information in a
little table at the bottom of the screen. The key is in bold black
text on a dark grey background, and the value is in normal text on a
light grey background.

So, on Lake Nawahunta, you screwed up a bit. I'm going to leave the
tags alone, and want you to change them. You have a key of water:type,
and a value of lake. This needs to be changed to the items that OSM
understands... we want natural:water.

Here's the way to do this very easily... get into Potlatch, and have
Lake Nawahunta on screen. Now click anywhere on the way that defines
the outline of the lake. You'll know you're pointing at the right spot
to select the outline when the cursor changes from an arrow into a
hand. You'll know that you have the way selected when the grey line
gets a yellow outline, and all the nodes pop up as red squares. You'll
also see your tags pop up on the bottom of the screen.

Now, lets play with keyboard shortcuts... press the plus key. When you
do that, you'll see a new tag entry line open up, and a list of keys
show up. Not all the available keys are listed, but you could select
one from there with the mouse if desired. However lets not get
distracted... lets just do a keyboard only shortcut.

BTW, I'm going to encase anything I want you to type inside quotation
marks. "m" mean type the letter m. <tab> means press the tab key.

So, we've highlighted the way, and pressed "+". Now type "natural"
<tab> "water" <tab>

There you go, the way is now defined as an area that surrounds a
natural formation filled with water. We simply call it a lake.

Now let's add a name to the lake...

With the way still selected, press "+" then "name" <tab> "Lake Nawahunta" <tab>

As simple as that, there's now a name associated to the lake you just made.

Hey, what about that tag from before : water:type lake? See the little
X inside dark grey circle after the word lake? Click that and you'll
delete that tag.

> When I look in HISTORY all my SAVE's are there. My copies of the lakes can
> be seen in the EDITOR (Yahoo) but nothing shows up in VIEW. The same thing
> happened when I did Lake Skenonto. I believe you fixed something because
> Skenonto does appear.

Yes you're right on the money. I changed the tags on Lake Skemonto so
that the renderer would know what to do with it. Just like you are
going to do with Lake Nawahunta... Once you change the tags, Mapnik
(the rendering program) will understand what you want the way you
defined to look like, and over the next few minutes to hours, Mapnik
will find your edits, and update the map tiles to show the new
information.

So, go find Turkey Hill Pond, and change the waterway:Lake into
natural:water so that Mapnik knows what to do. BTW, you need to make
sure you use lowercase on the tags. The tags are case sensitive, and
natural:Water won't render...

Also, if you want a point and click way to select tags, when you are
looking at Turkey Hill Pond, have a look at the line right above the
name. There should an icon on the left, and (no preset) on the right.
Hover over that, or click on them to see what happens. The icon
selects a group of different tags, and the side that says (no preset)
allows you to find the one you want in the list. You'll find water in
the set that has evergreen trees as the icon, and then select water.

> All help is really appreciated, your patience is alsoappreciated.

We'll get you there. Sitting down with you for 15 minutes would
probably have you well past this stage already. We just need to get
you into the groove and mindset for this editing concept. I think
you're probably going to get past this stumbling stage right away, and
start running like the wind.

We're working on teaching you to fish...

James
VE6SRV