[OSM-talk] Vector maps for Android

[Toby Murray]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 3:02 AM, Parveen Arora <mail at parveenarora.in> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 3:04 AM, Russ Nelson <nelson at crynwr.com> wrote:
>> I understand your desire to have an "official" application. If you'll
>> notice, though, there is no "official" OSM editor. Instead, there's
>> Potlatch for in-browser editing
> Ohh, Yes there are different tools combined together to make OSM work.
>
> But I will still prefer to have something from OSM, because it doesn't
> matter how many applications use osm data or how much better they are,
> If application from OSM will be in the market people will definitely
> like to use it.
>
> Same as there can be a lot of applications using Google maps but most
> of the people prefer to use services being provided by Google itself
> and moreover all the smart phones having android or ios are loaded
> with google's map by default.
>
> So If there can be some core application from OSM only then we can
> move the heavy number of users to use OSM and its data and one will
> only contribute to it if he/she will use it and only then we can have
> better and updated maps.
>
> Its very necessary unite all the community and fulfill the demand of
> increasing maps through smart phones.
>
> I hope admins will be listening to my voice and something better will
> be done soon.

I'm not sure how you propose that "OSM" write an application. First of
all, would it be a map display/use app or a map data editing app?
Typically when you try to write everything in one, it gets unwieldy
and hard to use. Do you want the OSMF board to write the code? Do you
want them to pay someone to write the code just so it can be
"official"? That's not how OSM works. The OSMF runs basic
infrastructure and that's it. The community writes applications,
documentation, editors, etc.

And that's what has happened for smartphones. I have 7 different OSM
related apps on my android and use them all for different things. I
can get on- and off-line rendering and routing including turn-by-turn
voice navigation, data collection, and data editing apps which covers
pretty much everything OSM related I want to do on my phone.

And in case you haven't found it yet, there is a big link right at the
top of http://osmand.net that goes directly to the nightly .apk file
for free.

Toby