[OSM-talk] Name finder and home page search working again

[Andy Robinson]

Awesome, great work David and all.

Cheers Andy

On 25/03/2008, David Earl <david at frankieandshadow.com> wrote:
> I'm pleased to say that after a major overhaul of the name finder to
>  make it possible to update incrementally, and also a move to a different
>  server (many thanks to Tom for helping set this up), the Name Finder and
>  home page search box are now working again with a bang up to date index.
>
>  The Name Finder home page is at
>  http://gazetteer.openstreetmap.org/namefinder and the search API is at
>  http://gazetteer.openstreetmap.org/namefinder/search.xml
>
>  (I anticipate using the top level of gazetteer.openstreetmap.org for
>  listings pages in time).
>
>  I will update the namefinder plugin for JOSM in due course. In the
>  meantime, there is a redirect in place on frankieandshadow.com so this
>  now works once again.
>
>  As well as main objective of incremental updates (it will be updated
>  daily now, overnight in UK time), there are some other improvements:
>
>  - searching is more efficient(*), especially for unqualified searches
>  with only a few results, though there is some way to go still, and gains
>  are undermined by the much larger number of results you tend to get back
>   epsecially for English place names (because of the Tiger import).
>
>  - Definite articles(**) are ignored, and "&" and "and" are
>  equivalent(***), so if someone mapped your favourite pub as "Bull and
>  Bush" and you search for "The Bull & Bush" it will find it.
>  Interestingly "The Louvre" will also find "Le Louvre" though this is
>  more by accident than design.
>
>  - Ways which I know represent areas are located by the centre of their
>  bounding box not a node on the boundary, (so searching for Edgecombe
>  House as reported by Tom Chance on December 20 now works properly)
>
>  - All combinations of apostrophe s, singular and plural should now work
>  (previously it worked if it was mapped with 's and searched without, but
>  not vice-versa).
>
>  - We now get 100% on the "British Museum Test for public mapping
>  websites" (though bear in mind "National Gallery" finds those in
>  Scotland and Ireland as well, Tate Modern catches the one in Liverpool
>  as well, so qualifying with London is advisable). Unfortunately "disused
>  station British Museum" comes out ahead of the museum proper in the list
>  because it is nearer London (****)
>
>  David
>
>  -----------------------------
>
>  (*) simple cases (like just a place name) are especially faster. It
>  is also faster for contextualised searches (e.g. "Hinton Road,
>  Fulbourn"), but this can be undermined for some searches because of the
>  very large number of similar place names in the US - for example if you
>  search for "Regent Street, Cambridge" there are now scores of places
>  called Cambridge in the database, and it has to check for Regent Street
>  in every on of them. So it is not that these are particularly
>  inefficient searches, just that there are a lots and lots of them to do.
>  Many place names in the UK suffer from much-replicated US villages of
>  the same name - so for example, even searches like "Warwick Avenue,
>  Woodbridge" are quite slow because there are 16 possible Woodbridges to
>  search - and indeed there are positive results in or near five of them
>  (though it's still faster than before the TIGER uploads). Suggestions
>  for addressing this welcome - incrementally returning results is one
>  possibility I guess. You can qualify it "..., UK" (provided the is_in is
>  present - which is almost never is for US places), but that's non-obvious.
>
>  (**) The, Le, La, Der, Die, Das, El and Il.
>
>  (***) Non-English support is limited, but in principle I could extend
>  this. At present "Arts et Métiers" station in Paris will match exactly;
>  and were it mapped "Arts & Métiers" would also match itself, but "Arts
>  et Métiers" would not match "Arts & Métiers" or vice-versa, though
>  slightly oddly "Arts and Métiers" would match "Arts & Métiers" had it
>  been mapped like that.
>
>  (****) See talk thread "The British Museum Test" starting Nov 24 2007,
>  and
>  http://povesham.wordpress.com/2007/11/23/the-british-museum-test-for-public-mapping-websites/
>  "The Tower of London" fixed by the definite article fix; V&A and British
>  Airways London Eye fixed on the map; St Paul's Cathedral fixed with the
>  apostrophe s fix, though actually the mapped name should really have an
>  apostrophe).
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Andy Robinson