[OSM-talk] track upload improvements

[Martijn van Oosterhout]

On 6/16/07, Stefan Baebler <stefan.baebler at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2) Users are converting their tracks from various formats to GPX, which
> might represent a slight obstacle in volunteer participation itself.
> Besides that, the conversion is lossy, loosing data such as number of
> satellites used for the fix, sometimes time, gps device model.

Well, the conversion isn't that lossy. By and large GPX is a superset
of all the other formats.

> What if
> there is a bug discovered later on in the conversion software? It would
> be easier to reconvert and reimport such tracks than to persuade people
> to reupload the original track (or even convert it with the latest
> converter before doing so).

Sorry? Bug in the conversion? If there was a bug it's obviously not
significant or people would have noticed.

> Also having a variety of formats uploaded
> would improve credibility of these tracks a notch. The various formats
> could be automatically converted to GPX using server side gpsbabel. If
> sometime later we decide that having some more track data might be
> useful (eg number of satellites) It could be easily retrieved from the
> original files (nmea logs at least, probably also others), as
> reimporting those would be possible. server side conversion could also
> eliminate duplicates without altering the originally uploaded data.

I don't think it's reasonable to require the server to understand
every format under the sun. If you're going to use gpsbabel anyway, do
it at the client end and save yourself the hassle. People are going to
do it anyway to clean up their own tracks.

Have a nice day,
-- 
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog at gmail.com> http://svana.org/kleptog/