[OSM-newbies] Cannot save using POTLATCH

[James Ewen]

On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 8:27 AM, Bob Maloney <maloneybob at gmail.com> wrote:

> I just submitted a correction for that.

I see Turkey Hill Pond now exists, and is nicely rendered on the map!

> I then decided to work on Queensboro
> Lake. when I looked at it in the editor, I see someone (probably you) had
> started but did not finish

If you had selected the way and pressed "h", the history would have
come up. From there you would have seen my username, and the timestamp
for when I worked on that outline.

> Approximately half the circumnavigation is done.
> Are you going to finish it or should I? If me, how do I pick up where you
> left off+

You probably did the right thing, not finishing my edit. I might have
been in the middle of completing the outline of the lake, and if both
of us submitted the last part of the lakeshore, we'd end up with
duplicate ways. When people are editing offline (which is the most
common way of editing, only Potlatch allows online editing that I know
of), you can run into conflicts because two people are editing the
same features, and try to upload overtop of the other.

However this doesn't mean that you can not modify existing work. Had
you looked at the timestamp on Queensboro Lake, and it had been a
couple hours since I last worked on it, I would say that it's okay to
go ahead and finish entering the lakeshore. If however the last edit
was only a couple minutes ago, you might assume that I was still
working on the lakeshore, and was possibly going to upload the
remaining lakeshore fairly soon.

As it was, I had finished the lakeshore, and tagged the lake, but
something must have gone wrong on the server or in Potlatch. I was
sitting here waiting for the rendering engine to update the tiles so I
could see my handiwork.

The circle is now complete, the student has become the teacher... my
job is done!

> I also plan to load some GPS tracks I have. For instance the Nawahunta Fire
> Road. I have tracks with time stamps. I presume I just input the GPX file
> into the GPS TRACES screen and enter the tag data in comma delimited format.

Not quite. Upload the GPX trace, enter a description of what the trace
is, and enter some tags. These tags as simply descriptive words to
allow people to search and find the GPX trace using these keywords.

Here's a trace I uploaded.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/VE6SRV/traces/718139

I tagged it thus: Canada, Alberta, Highway_55, La_Corey, 7-22

If you do a search for traces in Canada, or Alberta, or Highway_55, or
La_Corey, or 7-22, you will find this trace.

Here's a search for traces that have Highway_55 tagged...

http://www.openstreetmap.org/traces/tag/Highway_55

These keyword tags do nothing towards telling the OSM database about
the type of way the GPX trace describes. They are just keywords to
search through the GPX file repository.

So, upload the trace for Nawahunta Fire Road. I'd enter the
description as "Nawahunta Fire Road". For tags, I'd put "USA,
New_York, Harriman_State_Park, Nawahunta, Fire_Road". Again, these
tags just allow people to search on these terms to find the GPX traces
in the future if they are so inclined.

After the trace is uploaded, then you can click on the edit link on
the line where it lists the Start Coordinate. Have a look again at the
page for my GPX upload.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/VE6SRV/traces/718139

If you click on that edit link, you'll get taken to Potlatch, where
you can choose from editing with save or live. Before picking one of
those, check the little box at the bottom that says Convert GPX tracks
to ways.

This will take the GPX trace and turn it into a locked way. (Thick red
line). From there, you can edit the ways. Once they look good, you can
unlock them. (There's a big red Click to Unlock button in the tags
area).

This works really well if you drive down a road once. You can simply
turn the GPX trace into the road and the road is there just like that.
However, most of the time if you are driving around saving a GPS
track, you'll need to clean up the track before uploading. If you
looked at my example track above, you'll see that I drove back and
forth on most of the roads because they were all dead end cul-de-sac
style roads (actually access roads into oilwell production pads). I
need to rip up some tracks where I doubled back on myself. Maybe
delete some sections where I parked for a bit and the GPS wandered
making a mess, or maybe even having to move some nodes where the GPS
didn't have a good view of the sky. Once you have the way edited the
way you like, tag it and save it.

You can also not click the Convert GPS tracks to ways, and you'll just
have skinny light blue lines showing where your GPX trace goes. You
can simply trace over that line manually creating the way, then
tagging it appropriately, and finally saving it.

For an area like my example where I only have a couple of miles of
ways, and it's going to take quite a bit of editing, it might be
easier to not convert the tracks, and simply trace. However, for a
trace like this:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/VE6SRV/traces/210110 Where I drove
for about 5 to 6 hours down a highway, I simply converted the trace
into a way, and uploaded it. (I had to cut it into pieces because
Potlatch or OSM can't handle uploading such a long way)

Now, that was a few years ago, and there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on the
map in that area. I wasn't overwriting anything, just laying down the
first track in the area. When you are editing in an area with lots of
data, you need to pay attention, connect your new road to existing
roads, etc.

> How about entering Points of  Interest, can they be entered from a GPX file?
> If so, do they require a date stamp?

I haven't tried entering POIs from a file yet. I have enough to play
with just drawing roads and such...

> Thanks for your continuing assistance,

Keep on colouring! When your turn comes, mentor your students. As you
can see, I'm still learning from others with more knowledge.

Better yet, go out and drag some buddies into the OSM community, and
get more people working on the map!

James
VE6SRV