[OSM-talk] Very Happy - Looking forward

[Nick Whitelegg]

I've often thought of the idea of a "Footpath editor" which could be used in the field to automatically add footpaths/bridleways to OSM.

It should be possible to do, though it would rely on connecting to the live API in the field to both read and write data, to avoid duplication.
As it would be used in the countryside, it would be hoped that the amount of surrounding OSM data would be small so it wouldn't overload the servers or require silly amounts of data to be downloaded.

It would have to work something like this:

Work out the bounding box with the surveyor at the centre, say a bounding box of 100 metres
Get the ways and draw them
Ask user whether they want to survey
If so, start recording GPS track
User stops when required and enters the path type (high level or detailed tags)
Algorithm to automatically simplify GPS track
User selects connection points to existing network (these become first and last nodes of the new way)
Way is uploaded

What would be nice, and make these sorts of clients easier to develop, would be API calls to "throw" a load of lat/lons at the server and have the server automatically plug it into the existing network by working out what existing nodes the new way will use, though obviously this would require extra server power.

Nick


-----"Graham Stewart (GrahamS)" <graham at dalmuti.net> wrote: -----
To: talk at openstreetmap.org
From: "Graham Stewart (GrahamS)" <graham at dalmuti.net>
Date: 23/07/2012 09:40AM
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Very Happy - Looking forward

Rob Nickerson wrote
> 
> What's your wish-list?

I'd love to see a fully-featured editor that can be used in the field,
running on GPS-enabled smartphones and tablets.

How great would it be to add details of a way or feature while you are stood
right next to it? 
I imagine entering the way's name and type, then simply walking along it to
add it, perhaps adding other nodes and features as you go.

Hopefully Richard Fairhurst's iD project, creating a new editor in
Javascript, is the beginning of such a tool: http://www.geowiki.com/





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