[OSM-talk] "Crudely-drawn pint glasses"

[David Earl]

On 30/01/2008 11:07, Tom Hughes wrote:
> Remember that the primary focus of this project, as I understand
> it at any rate, is to produce data for other people to use. Making
> our own maps from our data is more of a convenience for us and a
> way to promote the project than our primary product.

Someone has to produce the tools or service though, whether it is under 
our banner or someone else's. If you're a restaurant in Chertsey who 
wants to print a map of your location on your flier, it is no use 
whatsoever to start with instructions which say 'install a database and 
fetch a 100Gb file off the internet'. To be practical, we (in the widest 
sense) have to offer pre-packaged tools and have reasonable expectations 
of what file sizes can be managed, how long it takes, and so on.

What this means in practice, I think, is either a readily useable web 
application, or an modest install (which may fetch data off the internet 
once installed, sure, and might only be a thin front end to a remote 
application or fetches data from a remote database in the form, say, 
Mapnik needs) and which has Windows as its main target because that's 
what 95% of the potential user base is using. (That may mean 
InstallShield of something equivalent; Java is problematic because that 
would mean installing the Java runtime, which your restaurateur probably 
won't have a clue about; dependencies are anathema).

Or it means offering a map production service, so that the provider, who 
is technologically capable, would mediate between the complex software 
and the user. But that probably means paying money, which rather defeats 
the object - you'd just be in commodity competition with other map 
providers there. Chances are your restaurateur  will take the line of 
least resistance and (illegally, though they don't realise it) start 
with a screen shot from a 'free' Google map.

David