[OSM-talk] Google Maps - OSM comparison
David Earl
david at frankieandshadow.com
Sun Nov 30 13:27:12 GMT 2008
On 30/11/2008 13:09, Gervase Markham wrote:
> David Earl wrote:>
>> However, if we start applying similar techniques to state captials or
>> other hierarchies, a search inferred from a loose syntax will not be
>> enough and I need to provide a more formal way for mechanical clients to
>> constrain their searches. As it stands "city" is ambiguous - it is both
>> a category and part of some names (to wit, "Mexico City").
>
> One hint it doesn't seem to use is the current viewport. If I'm viewing
> London, I probably want places in London sorted to the top, as opposed
> to placed in Scotland or places in the USA.
There's have to be some indication that's what was wanted IMO. This
discussion stared because people wanted (expected?) results to be
ordered by "importance" (though we only have a very coarse metric for
importance currently, which is why the expectation wasn't being met),
not by proximity to location.
One reason you might be doing a search is because you want to make a big
jump away from what you're looking at currently without all that tedious
zooming and panning, so assuming the current view is the centre of
interest is not necessarily a correct assumption (though it certainly
might be sometimes)
Also, though I'm sure it is possible, and I could use optimizations of
various kinds, ordering by great circle distance (which you'd need to do
for this) is quite a lot more compute intensive in the ordering than the
local linear distances I'm using to order by when you qualify by place
("Bahnhofstrasse in Munich").
David
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