[OSM-talk] Supplying of data

[Timothy Fintan Langner]

Hi

I am no longer able to make it to the IoW weekend as something else has come 
up.

However I would like to do something in the future. I often take me GPS with 
me when I go out as it allows me to collect free data without much effort. 
For example when travelling on the train (although not all trains give me a 
reception). I have the Guildford to Gatwick route off my GPS. Not all 
stations are marked on it yet but I could do that on a future trip as I use 
that route fairly often.

However before I start collecting data for openstreetmap have some 
questions.

When I capture GPS, I tend to put on numbered POIs (waypoints) and type into 
comment section of POI, it's name.

If I do that, is it possible to link that to the track points I've captured, 
before I upload, or do I manually need to add in the names to the track 
lines?

For buildings do I just including them with the GPX file or do I need to 
create a separate file?

Do you want people to submit evidence of their trip or do we keep that? By 
evidence I mean things like the weather on the day I went out or any POIs I 
wrote down, due to getting annoyed at the time it takes to enter comments in 
my GPS receiver.

To get useful data i.e. data that looks like roads, footpaths etc, do I need 
to use osmeditor, or can I use something else?

If I do, does it allow me to load files off my hard drive into it? I ask 
that because I've never found a program expect GPS Utility, which would read 
my eXplorist 210 GPS files. I spent sometime research this and found nothing 
else which worked. Therefore I have had to get files into GPS Utility and 
then save them out as another format, before I could use the data with any 
other program. I am not certain why this is the case as I have no other make 
of GPS receiver to compare it to.

Once those I know how the system works and what is required, I can capture 
and upload data from time to time.

At the moment I am more likely to have a load of tracks which are mainly 
unnamed roads and POIs of any place I happened to visit. Be it a post 
office, railway station, pub or even a shop where I bought something. I even 
have some stuff from a recent trip to Austria when I visited my brother.

Kind regards

Timothy Langner