[Talk-us] Excellent progress, u.s.

[stevea]

>At 2012-04-12 17:36, you wrote:
>>I see excellent progress in California during the recent eight days 
>>of re-mapping.  If you are an editing maniac...
>
>Can you comment on your process? I see very little real, coordinated 
>info about tools, concrete solutions, or teamwork. As a formerly 
>quite active SoCal mapper, I'm basically just dead in the water, 
>wondering how much of my hard work has just been discarded (e.g. 
>speed-limits, lanes, turn restrictions, source references, carefully 
>aligned geometries, etc.) and whether to bother trying to get it 
>back. I can't possibly be alone (?).
>
>I can't even find any info on the redaction. What is the plan? Where 
>is it now? How can I see what it's doing? Shouldn't there be a big, 
>bold link to this kind of info on the wiki main page?

Sure, Alan.  I'll try to help by explaining a core of my process, and 
you and others can take it from there.

Currently, the BADMAP layer on the CLEANMAP tool 
(http://cleanmap.poole.ch) shows how much more work needs to be done 
for the re-mapping effort ahead before unlicensable data is deleted. 
Yes, it is true that BADMAP layer "lags" edits by anywhere from one 
to three days, but it is nonetheless a useful tool.  So is the 
"License Change" view/layer on Geofabrik's map tool 
(http://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/?view=wtfe).

My process includes editing with JOSM (I am using version 5177, yours 
may be earlier as "tested" or later as "better" when you read this), 
and enabling a couple (at least!) sub-tools within it:

1)  Turn on "Remote Control."  This is done with JOSM Preferences -> 
click Remote Control icon on left (looks like a TV remote, the 9th of 
12 such left-most icons on Preferences window) where you check the 
checkbox "Enable remote control."  This allows JOSM to "listen" to 
web browsers viewing a map (like BADMAP) when the browser is 
instructed to send JOSM a message "go load this area into a JOSM edit 
buffer."

2)  While in JOSM's Preferences, click the "Plug-ins" icon (looks 
like an electrical cord and socket, the 4th of 12 such icons) where 
you scroll to about the middle of the list and turn on the "License 
Change" plug-in.

3)  If you are on a Macintosh, you may want to make a correction to 
Keyboard Shortcuts (looks like a corded keyboard, 7th of 12 leftmost 
icon) so that your Delete key actually deletes the current JOSM 
selection:  scroll to a bit higher than the middle of the Keyboard 
Shortcuts Preferences screen so you see "Edit: Delete" on the left 
side.  Single-click on the key (a pentagon surrounding an x) and then 
click on the area in the bottom of the screen which is below the text 
reading "Key" (it shows a picture of the key and has a scroller on 
the right).  Click on the scroller (looks like a downward arrow) and 
you will get a scrolling list of special keyboard keys.  You want the 
SECOND selection from the top, the one which is a LEFT-pointing 
pentagon surrounding an x.

(I entered this bug into JOSM's trac system, but I'm not sure it will 
migrate into the codebase soon).

Click OK to save your new Preferences, and you MUST restart JOSM to 
make these changes "stick."

4)  Turn on JOSM's Imagery menu -> Bing Sat.  Thank you, Microsoft.

5)  Now, use BADMAP or Geofabrik tool as above to find an area that 
"needs re-mapping for new license."  Zoom/pan so "just enough" screen 
surrounds the area you want to re-map.  In BADMAP, select "Edit in 
JOSM" or in Geofabrik, click the "J-pencil" button, and the browser 
will send a Remote Control message to JOSM to load the displayed area 
into an edit buffer.  Activate JOSM, putting your browser in the 
background.

6)  In JOSM, wait (if you must) for your map edit buffer to finish 
loading.  Now use the License Check plug-in's "Licensing Problems" 
window (should be in the lower right) to click the "License Check" 
button.  Wait for the Quick History service to do its comparisons. 
You now have the Relicensing problems window showing you a 
similar-to-Validator-style list of bad map elements.  The crucial 
ones are the red-circle (do not enter icon) "data loss" elements.

7)  For ways (I'm not going to explain points), here is what I do:

Select a bad way by double-clicking the way in the "data loss" list,
Press 3 (JOSM's shortcut for the View menu's "Zoom to selection" verb 
(critical, as it "centers" JOSM),
Copy (could be "command-C" or another keyboard equivalent, again I'm on a Mac),
Either
     Paste-Delete
or
     Delete-Paste

I say it like that because you have to see what the GUI does each 
way, and choose which method you like.  Paste-Delete is less obvious 
by the GUI, but you may like it (I do).  In essence what you are 
doing is pasting a copied bad way on top of the bad way.  So you MUST 
select the original bad way explicitly from the "data loss" section 
of the Licensing Problems, THEN delete THAT (with the Delete 
key...see why you fixed it?)

Now, the new (pasted) "bad" way is there, and the old bad way is 
deleted, but the new one is "just floating."  There are two critical 
sub-steps here:  first, use Bing Sat layer to "visually verify." 
This makes the new way "legal" in the sense of "I, the new editor of 
this way, have verified it."  (I do this for motorways and streets I 
can see in Bing Sat layer, but not for POIs unless I personally know 
them).  Secondly, you must merge all the points on the path which 
cross other ways with the M (merge) key/function.  This includes 
cul-de-sacs as highway=turning_circle, for instance, but not every 
single point that defines the curve of the way (if it doesn't 
intersect another way).  So zoom and pan along the entire length of 
the way you just pasted and Merge where necessary, and correctly.

8)   Repeat step 7 for all bad ways (or points) in the list of "data 
loss" that License Problems displays.

9)  Upload your re-mapping efforts.

10)  Clear the edit buffer by "trash"-ing (trash icon) the Data Layer 
in the Layers window (should be upper right):  select "this" layer 
and click the trash icon.

Repeat steps 5 through 10 until it is time to sleep or eat or live or 
play or work.

This is a bit rough-and-ready, and you can kvetch at me that it isn't 
perfect, or improve upon it, or whatever.  But there you go.  It's a 
good step 1.  If anybody wants to make a wiki out of this, proof it 
for me first, if you would please, and you have my permission to do 
so.

In the spirit of teamwork,

SteveA
California