[OSM-talk] opencycleroute.org

[Tom Carden]

On 08/05/06, Frank O'Dwyer <fod at opencycleroute.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm in the process of starting up a project to collect machine & human
> readable cycle routes under a CC license at opencycleroute.org.
>
>  From looking at the OSM site it looks like the two projects have some
> overlapping aims and could usefully exchange info. I would like to use
> GPX files to represent cycle routes as far as possible, and it would
> seem to make sense to make these as "OSM-friendly" as possible so that
> you can use them too.

If your data is licensed in a compatible way, and you structure the
format in any meaningful way, then at some point somebody will be able
to add it to OSM.

With a bit more work you could get it to synchronise its data with OSM
using the REST API, or perhaps even back your project onto
OpenStreetMap (Nick Whitelegg, with the patience of a saint, has been
working on using OpenStreetMap behind the scenes of his
walking-oriented freemap project -  he probably has much to say about
this).

Remember that much of what makes OpenStreetMap what it is today is its
wiki style editing - anyone can edit but all changes are logged so
that (eventually) they can be rolled back in the event of vandalism
etc.

> With this in mind I have some questions:
>
> - can OSM handle GPX files with waypoints as well as tracklogs?

It will handle them, but only the tracklogs will be displayed.

> - are GPX containing only waypoints any use to you, or do you need
> tracklogs?

In the future we might display the waypoints too, so they aren't
worthless, but for now we trace tracklogs by hand to make our maps. 
I'm not sure, but I think at least one of the standalone clients
(osmeditor, JOSM, etc) will convert GPX Waypoints into Nodes with tags
for OpenStreetMap - Nick, Imi?

> - would GPX files including text annotations, links to photos etc cause
> any problems? [ I would like to put route instructions and links to
> waypoint photos into the GPX file - easy enough to strip them out if
> they cause problems I guess ]

It's very easy - that's what we do :)  Although we now also store a
copy of the file I think.

> - is there / will there be an API to overlay routes onto OSM maps a la
> google maps?

Yes, this is definitely in the works. (I've done similar for Yahoo and
MS's maps API so adapting it to OSM is just a matter of time and bug
fixing for the tile code).

> - any other tips/pitfalls I should know about?
>

We didn't find GPX to be a suitable format for exchanging map
information - even with the possibility of extensions it was beginning
to bend and break.  There are some notes about this on the wiki.  It
might not affect your project, but you might need to consider
switching to a more specific format of your own if it's likely that
GPX doesn't express what you want to either.

Keep us informed about your project, it definitely sounds relevant and
it would be nice to have specialists dealing with that angle in the
whole open geo data scheme of things,

Tom.