[Openstreetmap] openstreetmap.org updates, ontology stuff

[SteveC]

Hi,

Various things needed fixing on the site and editor interface. There is
a new editor interface, see a screenshot on the front page at
http://www.openstreetmap.org/ where there is also a link to log in and
use it. The user accounts, stylesheets, images and a whole bunch of stuff
is all now working sweet as a nut, sweet like tropicana.

I have a static image map browser working but not integrated just yet.

Matt has contributed an image that I think looks super nice as a sort of
logo you'll see on the site.

All this stuff is in subversion if you want to help out.

I'm now working on the API's required for Nick and his QT app and
free-map things. (Which I think will be in subversion at some point)
Once done, they'll be supported in the applet too.

---

The idea behind this is to have a three-tier access to the data

1/ Joe Bloggs User who can flick around the static image based browser

2/ Small, simple edits with the applet

3/ Full blown QT app for those wanting to do things from home, local
editing of gpx tracks, fast, super cool features.

---

I find ontologies incredibly dull and top-down. The latter is actually
important since top-down stuff is so 1982 what with so many folksonomies
(eg flickr, gmail, del.icio.us) working well. This

http://craphound.com/etech2005-folksonomy.txt

might be of interest.

So, why not just open the classification stuff to the masses? If you
want to call a road a road or an autobahn or a freeway or a motorway, why
should I care?

So I'm implementing an open classification scheme where you can add
properties of roads (cycle path, road type, 2 lane...) and types of
Point of Interest (burger king, tube station...) as you like.

On top of this is an equivalence scheme for processing the data. You can
tell it that an autobahn and a freeway are really motorways and vice
versa. so you can access the data in the way you want. You can also
associate colours and icons with these things so on the map a tube
station gets a londom underground logo but an american will see that its
equivalent to a subway point and have their own logo if they want.

Of course all this is wiki'd so if someone deletes the key '13 means
motorway' then you can undo it.

This stuff is half-implemented, thought I'd open it up to y'all. There
are some interesting restrictions like one Nick brought up: It would be
nice to do bit masking on this, so 0-15 are roads, 16-31 are motorways
(or whatever bit range you want).

Comments appreciated! :-)

have fun,

SteveC steve at fractalus.com http://www.fractalus.com/steve/