[Openstreetmap] RoadMap map generator / editor

[Tom Carden]

On 10/17/05, Ehud Shabtai <eshabtai at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I agree. I'm not sure that's the client job though. The current
> behavior of RoadMap is to draw the road using the first GPS track.
> Next time you drive near that road, RoadMap detects that it's the same
> road and links for that road the new GPS points (the road is still
> drawn using the first GPS points), so nothing is thrown away.

 OK, that makes more sense.

The idea is that this information can then be sent to a server saying:
> Here's a street segment and here's a list of all GPS tracks for this
> segment.

 RIght.

The server should then merge all the points to a reined
> street segment.

 And that's the tough bit!
 I think the client/server separation you've made there is largely
artificial. The real question is *how* to do it, not *where*. For OSM, sure,
the merging would be done on the server, but for tasks where merging is made
easier with context-specific knowledge, the client is better placed to do
it.
 So the ideas I'm after are thoughts people have on merging an existing road
with a GPS track. Or in OSM's case, an existing road with hundreds of GPS
tracks of that road. When do we stop refining the shape? How do we take
noise into account? How much priority do we give to the most recent data? (
e.g. if a new roundabout/intersection is added, and we have 100 GPS tracks
which say there isn't one, but 1 GPS track for today which says there is -
can that be automatically merged?)
 Those are the things I'm interested in. They're PhD-sized questions, I
think.

>
> Can you explain the wiki-like aspect of OpenStreetMap? What does it mean?

 Basically every change made to OpenStreetMap is logged with a time stamp,
and changes can be rolled back. Like the history function in wikipedia.
 Tom.
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