[OSM-talk] some newbie questions

[Christoph Eckert]

Hi,

welcome :) .

> Two newbie questions. Before I start, an observation: I have uploaded
> a very small number of segments using JOSA, and it would be awesome
> to see the data I've just uploaded on a map.

The data will appear on the slippy map, sooner or later. The maps don't 
get rerendered instantly after new data appeared. This would 
technically be possible but required tons of new hardware.

> I'm sure this information is 
> available somewhere in the wiki, but it is not very newbie-friendly.

As it is a Wiki, you can improve it ;-) . More sincere, the usability of 
osm increases on a daily basis, but still new members need to learn 
some things first. 

> I'm thinking the starter tutorial needs to document all the steps
> between making a track log, and seeing the results on a map -
> thoughts?

If you want to see your mapping results immediately, you need to render 
it for yourself. If you use JOSM for editing, save the data to your 
harddrive as something like "MyMapData.osm". Then it can be rendered to 
SVG on various ways. If you're on a Linux or Mac box, I'd like to 
recommend osmarender4 by Jochen Topf. It's a shell tool, but with a 
little help you will be able to use it. The resulting SVG file can be 
viewed best in Inkscape, an open source SVG editor.

> Anyway: first, how do I upload gps logs? On
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Starter_Tutorial it states
> that GPX tracks can be uploaded at the traces page. On the traces
> page, I see no way of uploading.

Did you login? Then click "GPS traces" and then "Upload".

> Second, I have a bunch of gps tracklogs from several years ago which
> I'd like to upload (actually they were used to make a map for a
> navigation system demo). Some are raw nmea, some are garmin text
> format. I can convert nmea to gpx as required for OSM, but not the
> text.
>
> The text files look like this:
>
> @020228140136N5115724W00105506G006+00104W0003N0004U0000
> @020228140137N5115724W00105506G006+00104E0000N0000D0000
> @020228140138N5115724W00105506G006+00103E0000N0000D0000
>
> gpsbabel -i garmin doesn't seem to like it.

garmin is for communication with a device via serial or USB port. You 
want to use garmin_txt instead, I guess.

HTH & have fun,


ce