[OSM-talk] Mapping Reading, some impressions

Tom Chance tom at acrewoods.net
Tue Sep 5 00:18:28 BST 2006


Ahoy,

On Monday 04 September 2006 23:45, David Groom wrote:
> > osmeditor2 - slow and jerky, I've just used it to help trace physical
> > features
> > like rivers, lakes and woods, based on sketches 'in the field'. Contours
> > won't show up.
>
> Not sure why you have a problem here, both the Linux & Windows versions
> work for me. You have to download the SRTM data to your computer first
> however.

Ahhh, I shall try that later. My stupid fault, probably :o)


> > I can't work out the node/segment/way tools either, JOSM seems
> > much more intuitive.
> >
> >
> > Osmarender is nice, though it has many obvious flaws, such as:
> > * road joints can mess up and look, well, disjointed
> > * road names usually overlap with the casing
>
> try adding dy=0.33 to each rule for road names.  For example
>
> <text k="name" dy='0.33' text-anchor='middle' startOffset='50%'
> class="highway-unclassified-name" />

Perfect!


> > * road names go nuts in enclosed spaces :)
> > * abutters are OK, but look really messy in residential areas where you
> > have
> > roads just slightly farther apart than the rendered blocks
> > * pub labels make a mess rather than finding a neat way to fit in
>
> open the svg file in something like inkscape, and drag the pub name to
> somehwre it fits in.  That the advantage of an SVG file, as iits easy to
> modify what was created by Osmarende.  As you say it would be virtually
> impossible too automatically get everything right.  Osmarender will do as a
> good a job as it can, but it needs a bit of human help afterwards to amke
> the output look really good.

With pub names it's not too much of a bother, but I've attached a screenshot 
with a collection of errors and nitpicks that are really a huge hassle to 
correct over a large map. I don't know what can be done about them, but I 
thought I should flag them up:

* small bendy roads have completely hopeless labels
* labels on short roads get cut off
* neither the corner on Selva Court nor slight bends in Mount Pleasant worked
* the Mount Pleasant label starts at one end and finishes at the other?!
* the many residential abutters look a bit messy

With the Mount Pleasant label, I've found a similar effect happening when I 
edit pub names. Open an osmarender SVG and try editing a name, perhaps 
hitting enter to make the label cascade vertically to fit better. Weird 
things happen!

I'm sure that these problems can be solved without requiring hand editing... 
if not then I'm in awe of A-Z! If anyone can fix these problems I'll do a 
little jig.

Regards,
Tom

-- 
The task of critique is not to denounce the ideals, but to show their 
transformation into ideologies, and to challenge the ideology in the 
name of the betrayed ideal (Fromm – Beyond The Chains Of Illusion)
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