[Talk-ca] Help for Canvec to OSM for part of NB

[Frank Steggink]

Hi John,

Thanks for looking at the scripts. Please see below.

John Smart wrote:
> Hello
>
> I would like to take a shot at updating the OSM for some of New 
> Brunswick, which presently does not have very much mapping compiled. The 
> plan I think I'd like to follow is:
>
> 1. Select an NTS 1:50 000 area that has few roads and which has no OSM 
> or minimal OSM.
> 2. Run script(s) to generate OSM from the Canvec data set. At this point 
> I am only interested in roads, to prove the process for that.
> 3. Upload the OSM.
> 4. Have some people (you?) review the data, make comments.
> 5. Iterate the process a bit till quality good (or I give up!)
> 6. If I'm still here, maybe add some more.
>
> Any comments on my plan are very welcome, especially helpful tips!
>   
Regarding the road data, Canvec is derived from Geobase NRN, so it might 
be better to use the latter. The CITS guys here should be able to give a 
better answer ;) For Geobase NRN there is a different script, named 
geobase2osm.py [1].With that it is possible to convert certain areas 
(like a NTS tile) to an OSM file, and then you can use JOSM to import 
the data. There is a wiki page describing the Geobase process [2], but 
it still describes the convoluted process involving RoadMatcher.

The current process is:
* create a bounds file for a certain area for geobase2osm.py
* execute geobase2osm.py
* download OSM data for this area from JOSM
* open the resulting OSM file in JOSM
* copy over the features which do not exist
  -> make sure you connect the new roads to the existing roads in OSM
  -> depending on the density of the data, it is generally better to 
work in multiple iterations
* upload the data to OSM
  -> indicate in the description of the changeset that you imported data 
from Geobase for tile 999x00.

Several people on this list have experience with this process, so don't 
hesitate to ask any questions you might have.

For Canvec we're organizing a meeting in a few weeks, in order to get 
some experience with the import, and to work on the process.
> The part I'm currently interested in is #2, generating OSM from Canvec. 
> I saw on the mailing list that there is a python script called 
> canvec_to_osm_features.py, and I have downloaded that. However, I have 
> difficulty running it on my Windows XP box. Specifically:
> - I can launch python (which I happen to have on my path)
> - But if I just run "C:\Canvec2Osm>python canvec_to_osm_features.py 
> --version" then nothing happens.
>
> I'd appreciate any comments on exactly what I need to do to get this .py 
> script to work.
>   
The script you should execute is canvec-to-osm.py. :) The other script 
only contains the list of features which should be imported. I separated 
it to make it easier to manage. (Unfortunately the second script file 
contains underscores, but I'll update that soon. Maybe I should just 
rename it to "features.py", so that it is immediately obvious that this 
script should not be called directly.)
> Lastly (for now) I think that if I get the .py working, I will 
> immediately run into a problem with shp-to-osm. Like the .py readme 
> said, I have made a bin directory and I've put the shp-to-osm in there. 
> Actually I have both:
> 2009-11-11  17:37         7,365,493 
> shp-to-osm-0.7.3-jar-with-dependencies.jar
> 2009-11-11  17:37         7,365,493 shp-to-osm.jar
> in case there is some naming problem. Have I done the right thing?
>   
Ian Dees always uses the longer name when building the jar file, so you 
only have to keep the first one. You'll learn quickly enough if the jar 
file can't be found for some reason :)

> Thanks for any help. I hope I won't get frustrated and that I'll be able to help the project a bit!
Helping us would be wonderful. Especially New Brunswick still has large 
white areas, so it would be excellent to see that filled up!

Cheers,

Frank

[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Geobase2osm
[2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Geobase