[OSM-talk] Some observations from a newcomer

[Etienne]

I have suggested on several occassions, and strongly urged on several other
occassions, that www.openstreetmap.org should take people directly to the
wiki and not the dreadfully slow applet.

I'm probably not going to mention it again.

Etienne

On 10/11/06, David Groom <reviews at pacific-rim.net> wrote:
>
>
> blank
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Earl" <david at frankieandshadow.com>
> To: "OSM" <talk at openstreetmap.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 7:02 PM
> Subject: [OSM-talk] Some observations from a newcomer
>
>
> > I've recently joined in doing some mapping. I thought I'd share some
> > observations. Though I'm new to this project, I do consider myself
> > technically competent.
> >
> > To understand the process, I've systematically done the town of
> > Chapel-en-le-Frith in Derbyshire (pop 6,000), and my home village of
> > Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire (pop 3,000). I'm planning on filling in the
> many
> > gaps in Cambridge city over coming months (what there is so far is
> mostly
> > unnamed segments). (If someone more experienced want to review what I've
> > done, I'd be interested to hear, so I don't propagate things which don't
> > follow conventions I don't know about).
> >
> > - Sorry to start with a damning criticism, but the viewer on the home
> page
> > is completely useless. It can leave it 20 minutes sometimes and never
> see
> > either the landsat images or any data plotted, or sometimes just a small
> > part. The edit applet is the only way I can look at existing data (from
> > the
> > web site - obviously, I could use JOSM). I know there are "performance
> > problems", but frankly the viewer really doesn't work at all. I'm using
> > IE7
> > usually, but it's the same in Firefox 1.5, and I'm on a 4Mb broadband
> > connection. I'm wondering whether there is something unusual at my end,
> > because I can't believe you would have something that is so functionally
> > useless as the home page.
>
> I think that over the past few days the Landsat server has been
> experiencing
> problems, I've noticed a problem both in viewing landsat photos in the
> online viewer, and in the customised version of JOSM.  Sadly this if this
> is
> the case then its is outside of the control of OSM.  Not much help, but if
> in the online viewer you were logged in, then when looking at the "view"
> you
> were to click the plus button twice, to get from the default zoom level of
> 14 to zoom level 12, and then click the edit tab you should get data
> displayed a lot quicker.
>
>
>
> >
> > - It's quite hard to know what's been done already (unless there's
> nothing
> > at all!). Some areas look superficially complete, but when you look on
> the
> > ground, you find only a skeleton of streets is there. The areas I've
> done
> > are complete to the street level (E&OE) but don't include footpaths, and
> I
> > know there's lots of foot links between ends of culs-de-sac. It might be
> > helpful to another contributor to know this. I've put a couple of
> > proposals
> > on the proposals pages that I would find hepful, but a general way of
> > defining the level of detail of mapping for an area might be helpful.
> >
> > - A lot of areas seem to have segments, but virtually no Ways (and no
> > street
> > names). This seems like wasted effort as if you don't know the street
> > names,
> > it needs a second survey to pick them up. I found I needed to put the
> > names
> > I collected into the map soon after surveying (even if I didn't upload
> it
> > immediately), or I'd forget the nuances. Main roads form a useful
> > skeleton,
> > but recording the closes and avenues of a housing estate without adding
> > the
> > street name data (and hence the Ways) seems pretty pointless to me.
> >
> > - I tried photographing street name signs, but it was too fiddly turning
> > camera on and off (and wasn't helpful in the dark), and I decided in the
> > end
> > sketching a map, tube-style, as I went round was easiest.
> >
> > - I had to cover some ground twice, just to get to virgin territory, and
> I
> > was surprised how much the GPS traces varied. Even when it said 6m
> > accuracy,
> > I'd find I'd got a parallel track to the previous day more than 6m away,
> > and
> > it wasn't just being on the other side of the road.
> >
> > - A question: I've got a railway going over a bridge over a road, but it
> > shows up going under. How do I force the railway bridge to be an
> > over-bridge? And can I, with the railway as a single Way, put it over
> one
> > road and under the next one it crosses?
> >
> > - I sometimes wanted to mark the position of a roadside feature (e.g.
> > Church, filling station). Waypoints are fiddly to enter, and I found the
> > easiest way in the end was to mark the name on my sketch map, and, as I
> > was
> > on a bike, just loop around on the road so I got a little circle on my
> > tracklog.
> >
> > - Why does osmarender do trunk roads in red and primaries in green? This
> > is
> > the reverse of the convention usually used in the UK. Maybe other
> > countries
> > are different.
> >
> > - I'll post a second message about JOSM.
> >
> > David
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > talk mailing list
> > talk at openstreetmap.org
> > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
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