[OSM-talk] Newbie - queries and usability suggestions

Rhys Powell stanley12 at blueyonder.co.uk
Wed Nov 22 23:58:02 GMT 2006


Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Calum Polwart wrote:
> 
>> OK I'm new here, but having a few issues - I'm reasonably 
>> computer savy so it worries me slightly that you will loose 
>> potential volunteers because the userfriendlyness is (a bit) 
>> rough around the edges.
> 
> With time, the worry wears off.
> 
>> I've uploaded a track, and started doing some mapping from it.  
>> That's fine.  But because my track in above 54' N it doesn't 
>> render on slippy.
> 
> The new slippy map is useless.  The old slippy map was useless 
> too, but in different ways.  Every approach I have seen has been 
> useless in its unique way.
> 
> So how can you avoid apathy and cynicism?  Look for solutions that 
> allow you to work offline, independent of the central servers (API 
> or slippy map).  The wiki still works.  Go driving to collect 
> track logs.  Play with Osmarender.  Try the German algorithm (I 
> put the link in my diary some time back, [[user:LA2]] on the wiki) 
> for automatic map generation from track logs.
> 
> Ultimately, we need some solid GIS experience on how to make the 
> database, API and slippy map generation fast and scalable.  A new 
> tile must be generated in a tiny fraction of a second (20 ms or 
> so), independent of the scale, and it must be possible to 
> invalidate only the right parts of the tile cache.  In a map of 
> England, the tile that covers London is the real challenge.  It is 
> based on many thousands of line segments, and doesn't really need 
> to be redrawn if only a small street is modified.  I think there 
> must be abstraction layers in the database and API that correspond 
> to the zoom levels, so that changes in small details don't 
> propagate to (and invalidate cached tiles at) all zoom levels. If 
> you can download the database dump, play with this, and create a 
> fast slippy map, you could rescue the entire project.

So how can you avoid apathy and cynicism?

By actually looking at how old this project is.

Calums original post was excellent in highlighting problems, some of 
which we have all seen before, some of which are very different due to 
the hard work that has been done by the people who can code.

Having recently been to a few GIS talks in the UK I can honestly say 
that compared to many, OSM is a wonderful example of open source 
resourcefulness in the fact the application can already work so well. In 
comparison, a diagram of the infrastructure that the Ordnance Survey use 
just for the UK, OSM should take about a month just to render 1sq mile, 
yet it doesn't and yes it still takes a long time and yes the focus is 
currently on the UK, but that will change.

It has been said many times before, please be patient. The foundation is 
now in place, that means a good start on fund raising. Steve is spending 
the whole month coding, and already the improvement can be seen. Having 
been involved with computers since the dinosaur's, trust me this project 
is advancing very fast, much faster than many apps/OS'es/systems that 
people currently use, and yet is still providing lots of useful data for 
other projects.

Thanks

Rhys





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