[OSM-talk] JOSM shp file plugin

Gregory Arenius gregory at arenius.com
Wed Oct 20 15:16:55 BST 2010


> On 10/20/10 09:52, Sam Vekemans wrote:
>
>> I'm wondering if it is in the works to have a JOSM plugin where it can
>> automatically convert shp files (ie. run shp-to-osm.jar in the
>> background),
>>
>
> No, that would only encourage people to do even more mindless imports than
> we have already. There's not a day gone past without somebody, somewhere,
> importing data without talking to anyone first - overwriting existing data,
> creating duplicate nodes, ignoring license questions, not thinking about
> updates, and whatnot.
>

There isn't a day gone past where the vast gaps in the OSM dataset, the
missing address nodes, missing turn restrictions, missing building outlines,
missing subdivisions, missing everything and whatnot don't hugely degrade
the usefulness of the project.  How is the set of problems you mentioned any
worse than the missing data, much of which we could get through imports?


>
> Imports are a complex topic and they require a lot of thought and
> discussion. Making imports easier will enable everyone to go through the
> steps technically without necessarily having the proper understanding of OSM
> that is required.
>
>
Making your toolchain so difficult to use that people can't get anything
done just so that they won't make mistakes while doing it is a completely
backwards way of going about things.

There is a huge amount of data out there that is under an acceptable license
to import into OSM that would be a great asset to the project.  You can say
"just go collect it manually" but if we know the data is already there we're
not going to put in years of work duplicating it just to appease this
anti-import mindset that some on this list have.  I know this mindset came
about because of all of the problems that have resulted from different
imports but the solution to this is a better set of tools and a better set
of documentation for those tools.  The solution is not making imports more
difficult to do as that will just create more of the aforementioned data
import problems.

I think a JOSM shp plugin would be extremely useful.

Cheers,
Greg
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20101020/43739271/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the talk mailing list