[OSM-talk] riverbanks, way, segs, corrruption, user experience, traction.

lewispusey lewispusey at earthlink.net
Thu May 3 15:58:43 BST 2007 

Deleting and redrawing the ways will require days more of work and since I 
redrew them once; that was several more days, and the original drawing then 
alsotook days. I think this points to a problem, losing original information 
and time consuming redraws for no real reason (other than the first pass was 
not right?).
     I studied the original documentation, I've asked questions. The current 
documentation and state of the project are part of the problem, as well as 
the definition of "ways" and the state of programming in JOSM.
     I can't tell you how aggravating that problem is for me but this and 
former emails are an attempt to communicate that.
     I just spent many hours redrawing a large lake that was duplicated or 
broken on upload repeatedly. For something that I do for free on my spare 
time that level of frustration is not realy acceptable. I'm not saying this 
to aggravate anyone, simply: if you want non-commercial contribution 
something needs to be a lot more editor friendly soon from an individual 
editing perspective. Trial and error (only partly my problem as I did do my 
research) is no way to edit or learn a new system, especially as tags and 
code and definitions are in flux.
      Having both ways as the same way will only be broken again in the 
future as I anticipate that that is not going to ultimately be a rigorous 
enough solution and that another time consuming redraw will have to happen 
again at some point, how much auto-processing could help that I wonder?
     Hope this feedback can stimulate the firming up of a more user friendly 
experience.
Lewis
PS: other things that seem highly redundant are the need to order "segs" and 
of course the "duplicate" corruption. The tagging could also be much 
streamlined, manually entering text over tons of short "ways" is a total 
unnecessary pain. What is a way, anyway? a street, a feature, a bug, a 
temporary solution? a polygon side? a line of ordered "segments". GPX code 
might be good for GPS but not so much for a mature information hierarchy. 
( I don't really care what direction something was drawn and shouldn't have 
to manage that as an editor) Its a database problem or a problem of 
implimentation or design or conception.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <talk-request at openstreetmap.org>
To: <talk at openstreetmap.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2007 7:00 AM
Subject: talk Digest, Vol 33, Issue 9


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> Today's Topics:
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>   1. Re: Mapnik has busstops (Nick Whitelegg)
>   2. Re: Mapnik has busstops (Steve Chilton)
>   3. Re: messy riverbank (David Groom)
>   4. Re: Low level refresh (Rapha?l Jacquot)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 10:28:10 +0100
> From: Nick Whitelegg <Nick.Whitelegg at solent.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Mapnik has busstops
> To: talk at openstreetmap.org
> Message-ID:
> <OFB9671172.9652C177-ON802572D0.0033E6DE-802572D0.0034046E at solent-university.ac.uk>
>
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>>If Mapnik gets
>>coastlines right and planet.osm is dumped on a daily basis rather
>>than weekly, Tiles at home might go the way of the dinosaurs.
>
> I think you miss the point that they have *different styles*! Some prefer
> one, some prefer the other. That's exactly why I do my own rendering for
> Freemap rather than just use tiles at home or the default Mapnik.
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 10:44:29 +0100
> From: Steve Chilton <S.L.Chilton at mdx.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Mapnik has busstops
> To: Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se>, talk at openstreetmap.org
> Message-ID:
> <807403873A309745A3B9F193A721F19E02A2E89A at MDX-CLX-DC1.uni.mdx.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
> Let's not forget that this is a cooperative/collaborative project. The 
> Osmarender and Mapnik outputs should not be seen as in competition but as 
> two parallel parts of the project that have their own strengths and 
> weaknesses. At present Osmarender (via T at H) is more hackable and because 
> distributed gives more immediately visible results. Mapnik has more 
> unified design and deals neatly with some particular issues (text 
> placement, bringing in and out data from other sources - eg coast, builtup 
> areas at some zooms).
> What I would like to see is the folks behind the metacarta version and 
> those behind the Mapnik slippy implementation working together to see if 
> one can inform the other. I am too na?ve on the processes to offer 
> solutions, but can whatever makes it posible for metacarta to render a 
> planet dump quickly (massive server power?) be incorporated in some way in 
> the process of updating the slippy version of the Mapnik layer (by port 
> the tiles?)?
>
> Cheers
> STEVE
>
> Steve Chilton, Learning Support Fellow
> Learning and Technical Support Unit Manager
> School of Health and Social Sciences
> Middlesex University
> phone/fax: 020 8411 5355
> email: steve8 at mdx.ac.uk
>
> Chair of the Society of Cartographers:
> http://www.soc.org.uk/
> Mind the (Map) Gap:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5413010.stm
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org 
> [mailto:talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Lars Aronsson
> Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2007 6:40 AM
> To: talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: [OSM-talk] Mapnik has busstops
>
>
>
> Yesterday on the #osm IRC channel, Ben exclaimed: Mapnik has
> busstops! And indeed, cute little buses show up as symbols on
> either side of the way, down at the deeper zoom levels.
>
> Why had neither of us noticed this before?  Because when we get
> halfway down to that zoom level in the Mapnik layer, we're met
> with "more OSM coming soon", and then we back out and don't go in
> any deeper.  In fact, we don't go back to Mapnik at all.  Instead
> we use the Osmarender layer from Tiles at home, where the delay from
> edit to web presentation can be hours instead of weeks and months.
>
> Now Tiles at home might have a melt-down over the full disk, but I
> guess that can be fixed in the next few days.  The only real
> threat to Tiles at home is if Mapnik would become fast.  And that's
> exactly what's happening. The Mapnik & tile engine by Schuyler
> Erle and Christopher Schmidt is updated on the same day that the
> new planet.osm becomes available, and tiles are generated on
> demand (and then cached) in a matter of seconds.  You just zoom
> in, and the tiles appear.  No more "coming soon"!  This
> presentation is available at http://labs.metacarta.com/osm/
>
> This is very different from the Mapnik tile engine at
> www.openstreetmap.org, where requests for rendering are placed on
> demand, but nobody knows when these requests will be served.
> Come back an hour later or next week, and your new tiles might be
> there, or maybe not.
>
> I don't know how it works.  Perhaps those who know can explain.
> All I know is that my new roads from the last weeks can be seen
> "in Mapnik" on labs.metacarta, but not yet on www.openstreetmap.
>
> The Mapnik renderer (on both sites) uses some black magic for
> coastlines.  It doesn't read the coastlines that are now getting
> imported into the OSM database.  It provides correct coastlines at
> the outer zoom levels, but as you zoom in it shifts to another
> system that is completely broken.  Entire towns are found in the
> middle of a blue sea.  This bug in the Mapnik renderer might be
> the last hope for the Tiles at home subproject.  If Mapnik gets
> coastlines right and planet.osm is dumped on a daily basis rather
> than weekly, Tiles at home might go the way of the dinosaurs.
>
>
> -- 
>  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 10:46:27 +0100
> From: "David Groom" <reviews at pacific-rim.net>
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] messy riverbank
> To: <talk at openstreetmap.org>
> Message-ID: <005a01c78d68$094a06b0$6475a8c0 at xp1>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
>  From: lewispusey
>  To: talk at openstreetmap.org
>  Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2007 5:06 AM
>  Subject: [OSM-talk] messy riverbank
>
>
>  I have tagged a river with riverbank and the rendering is spilling all 
> over. Do I need just one superlong way or is ther another way to handle 
> that? If I need to convert a large numger of smaller ways to a superway 
> what is the best proceedure? Is it possible  to convert ways back to 
> individual segment and nodes that are unconnected?
>  Lewis
> 
> http://informationfreeway.org/?lat=5409908.19356&lon=-8047575.23254&zoom=13&layers=000B00
>
>
> Lewis
>
> Osmarender, and therefore the tiles at home layer, expects the tag 
> waterway=riverbank on a way which comprises both sides of a river.
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Proposed_features/Large_rivers
>
> The segments in the area you refer to are on in different ways for each 
> side of the river.  Merge ways which are opposite each other and the 
> tiles at home rendering should be OK.
>
> Ways can be merged in JOSM.
>
> You ask "Is it possible  to convert ways back to individual segment and 
> nodes that are unconnected?", just delete the way.  This can also be done 
> very easily in JOSM
>
> David
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 12:30:53 +0200
> From: Rapha?l Jacquot <sxpert at sxpert.org>
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Low level refresh
> To: lewispusey <lewispusey at earthlink.net>
> Cc: talk at openstreetmap.org
> Message-ID: <4639B9DD.8040700 at sxpert.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
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> lewispusey a ?crit :
>> What was the proceedure for requesting the refresh of low level zoom
>> display in the map servers?
>> I did the level 12 zoom but now would like to make sure things look good
>> on a lower level.
>> Lewis
>
> you just wait until my script goes through the area again...
>
>
>
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