[Talk-GB] invisible

[Chris Moss]

Many thanks to everyone who's replied. I have a page full of notes from 
all your suggestions. The amount that is going on is very impressive.

Richard's point that OSM is a data project rather than an end user map 
website  puzzles me. I can understand that in server terms there are 
huge demands but isn't one of the ways of coping with that by being 
selective about the data that's given out. That implies that the user 
has to be able to specify what they're interested in - which requires a 
whole data structure to support it.

As I understand it, all the data - supermarkets, bus routes, power grids 
etc. is being uploaded to OSM and is also downloaded at some level of 
detail - except that it's virtually useless because it can't be 
distinguished from the other stuff. Or do I misunderstand what's going on?

When I look at openstreetmap I get a choice of 4 base layers: Mapnik, 
Osmarender, Cycle Map and NoName. The first two appear to be rendering 
engines, and I can find NoName in the wiki, but what is Cycle Map and 
why is it there?

Please don't think I'm denigrating cyclists - I'm one myself. But 
shouldn't there be an opportunity for 100 such layers?

What strikes me about the list of OSM-based services is that most of 
them are restricted to one or a few countries; this isn't surprising for 
many reasons, not least the language issue. But wouldn't it help if all 
projects were on a country basis?

Chris