[Talk-us] a more compressed OSM?

[Paul Fox]

richard wrote:
 > On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 11:24 AM, jeremy jozwik <jerjoz.forums at gmail.com> wrote:
 > > hello fellow mappers! for years i have been using my openmoko for my
 > > gps tracking mapping general screwing around.
 > > recently the device has lost its ability to read from the SD card so i
 > > have been viciously limited in the storage i have available for cached
 > > map tiles. right now i am limited to maybe 150mb, which is tiny for a
 > > big city like los angeles.
 > >
 > > anyhow im wondering if there is a more compressed version of OSM tiles
 > > out there already?
 > > i have a local cache on my debian machine that i am attempting to
 > > batch compress, not really working so far.
 > > so i am wondering if there is already a url of these types of map tiles.
 > 
 > Bummer about the SD card failure.  :(
 > 
 > You asked about tiles; I think CloudMade has mobile tiles that are
 > smaller dimensions and fewer colours.  Check with them.
 > 
 > Have you considered using a native .osm file, then rendering on the
 > device?  You may have to change software but get better results?
 > 
 > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Software/Mobile_phones

not mentioned in that list is RoadMap (http://roadmap.sourceforge.net)
which was designed for on-the-fly rendering on small devices.  (a fork
of RoadMap is what powers Waze, for instance.) RoadMap requires that
you pre-convert quadtiles or other OSM subsets into its own .rdm
format.  it works reasonably, but would really be helped by a set of
pre-converted maps on a public server.  converting on the fly means
hitting the OSM servers too much if you're downloading anything more
than a pretty small area, and the bandwidth clamps cut in.

i run roadmap using gtk, but it builds for qt, is being ported to
android, and at one point even ran on the iphone.

paul
=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at foxharp.boston.ma.us (arlington, ma, where it's 65.8 degrees)