[OSM-talk] POI display on osm.org

[Roland Olbricht]

Hello Peter,

> > Having the icons on the map is unlikely possible, because there might be
> > simply not enough space on the Mapnik map.
>
> If I get a popup saying something about 3 restaurants, but I only see
> one or two, that looks strange and I have no idea, where the third one
> might be on the map.

It may also discourage the mapper if the third restaurant is not shown on the 
map. That gets us closer to the problem: there are two different conversions 
involved here:

The first is to get the reality into the database. This is at the heart of the 
project but essentially a problem of human motivation. A technical solution 
thus has to motivate mappers and give feedback. This is what the prototype is 
about: It should show the content of the database as verbatim as possible yet 
human-readable and -presentable. In particular, the choice which of the three 
restaurants is the least important is subjective, thus not possible for a 
machine on a general base, and thus the prototype must show all three 
restaurants here.

The second is to make of the database content a visually appealing map. This 
is essentially a problem of design. Leaving out features for one or another 
reason is in general a good choice of design. A tooltip mechamism here is 
helpful, but on purpose a different task of the Top Ten Tasks.

I think a perfect solution here would be to use one or another form of 
clustering whenever rendering conflicts occur. In particular this requires a 
straightforward possibilty for the user to easliy hide or show object 
categories and is thus a completely different approach than a slippy map. A 
vector map would go in the right direction. A complete solution here is sadly 
still some years away.

Cheers,

Roland