[OSM-newbies] Tagging bigger mini-malls, and orthogonality

[Richard Weait]

On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 9:53 PM, Stewart C. Russell <scruss at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Got a couple of questions that came up from mapping my neighbourhood:
>
> 1) The mini-mall shown in the upper part of
> <http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=43.732049&lon=-79.269421&zoom=18&layers=M>
> has 20 establishments in it, but only shows nine, five of those with
> labels. Given that a seemingly random selection of stores shows up on
> the map, is it worth me adding the 28 premises in the mall to the south
> of Eglinton Avenue?

Well of course they are worth mapping.  Even if some of the icons
don't appear on the mapnik layer, because of crowding and others don't
appear because an icon isn't included in the mapnik style, the 28
premises are worth adding.  Here are just a few reasons why:

There is more than one map style.  OpenCycleMap shows bike shops and
bike parking.  The mapnik style does not.  Different styles for
different audiences emphasize different items.

There is more than one method of creating a map.  The mapnik layer
chooses to reduce overlapping items by not rendering some objects that
would otherwise overlap.  You could disable that and see a fractional
object.  The osmarender layer allows overlapping icons so you can see
some of those already.

Somebody might choose to create OpenMiniMallMap, which zooms further
and renders pretty icons for many more shops.

Even if they don't render in web based images, these shops will show
up in other results, like nominatim search results, counts of
businesses per unit area or surveys of number of video shops per
municipality.

So, yes, put those businesses on the map.

> 2) The two rather squint malls shown at
> <http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=43.727459&lon=-79.265494&zoom=18&layers=M>
> were supposed to have right angles, but JOSM's Orthogonalize did this.
> Are these really right angles and it's just the projection skewing it?

Try setting your josm preferences to mercator and orthagonalizing
again.  Worked for me.  Looks like you might be working in WGS84