[OSM-talk] Prolification of the amenity tag

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Wed, Nov 29, 2006 at 04:25:51PM +0000, 80n wrote:
> The current ratio of maps to renderers is about 0.0000001:3 ;-)  We have
> about 0.0000001% of the planet mapped. 

With the WMS-C renderer, we have any part of the planet we care about
mapped. That's the entire point of it: you don't have to care about what
part of the world is or is not mapped, so long as you can get that part
of the world mapped any time you want it. I don't think that anyone
cares how Google generates its tiles -- just that the tile is always
there when I ask for it. That's what the WMS-C renderer provides.

> Most mashups of geo data that I have seen comprise a pre-rendered base map
> (usually Google maps or similar) with another dataset overlayed on top.  I
> think this is what most people imagine when talking about mashups.
> 
> The opportunity to access the source geodata in OSM enables multiple
> datasets to be merged before rendering.  Whether the data comes from OSM or
> somewhere else is unimportant - the ability to merge it before rendering
> *is* important.  

And can be done completely seperate from OpenStreetMap. The "Create a
rendering database process" could take OpenGuides, OpenStreetMap, and
Wikipedia data combined and make a map out of it. (Okay, it couldn't
because it would violate the license of OSM, but I'm pretending I live
in a world where the use of the OSM data is not limited such that you
can't combine it with other data sets -- since the same is true if you
mash the data up in different layers, its doesn't really change the
argument.) 

There are better tools for maintaining a list of pubs than OSM. The data
should absolutely be rendered in an OSM map -- but that doesn't mean
that the OSM interface is the best way to maintain that data. 

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta