[OSM-talk] High Cartographic Quality Label Placement on OSM-based Map

[Andreas Reimer]

Hi there, I am a colleage of Max's and we collaborated on his labelling 
papers. Chiming in to straighten up some potential miscommunications.

Am 13.07.2013 20:36, schrieb Christoph Hormann:
>
> But i would actually emphasize a more practical point: Since this is
> meant to be scientific research one can assume you publish it to allow
> others to independently verify your work, compare it to their own and
> possibly improve it - this is in the very definition of scientific
> work.  When dealing with fairly complex algorithms like here this is
> next to impossible to do without publishing the code.

Just wanted to point out that "fairly complex algorithms" are actually 
not published the way you assume, although I totally see your point.
Some context: map labelling is a popular subject for computational 
geometry and GIScience people. And they do not usually produce or share 
fully-fledged frameworks, but algorithms in pseudo-code with complexity 
analysis in Big O notation and/or pragmatic runtime analysis as 
empirical exploration with a sample implementation.
The whole point of algorithms research is to move beyond implementation 
and do research, well on algorithms, instead of software libraries.
That Max has a very stable and functional framework is uncommon for the 
scientific community.
And he built that framework mostly in his free time over the years to 
better test his hypotheses & results.

>
> Now i understand you might be reluctant to make available the code
> before a journal publication and you would not necessarily need to make
> it open source/free software license wise although this would be
> advisable as a matter of fairness when extensively using Openstreetmap
> data.

Yes, once the paper is accepted, the algorithm is out there in the open 
and I am sure any of us will gladly answer questions and help for anyone 
wanting to use the algorithm. Getting a set of tiles with new labelling 
for anyone to use is also giving back to the community already?

>
> And i won't even get started on the fact that work of a publicly funded
> research institution should benefit the public...
>

This is a serious point to clarify. The idea of public research is as such:

- researchers push the boundaries and develop new algorithms and publish 
them
- companies and engineers in public service use the algorithms for their 
products*/tasks
- everything gets more efficient, more money is left for other wonderful 
stuff
- repeat

*(note who is the one making the most money with the algorithm in such a 
scheme)

There are strong interests at stake that make wholesale software 
development at Universities a risky endeavour or plainly forbidden. You 
might disagree with that, but I hope you can at least acknowledge there 
are competing interests here which neither of us can change at the moment.

Thanks so much for your interest in that work, I agree with you that 
most tile-based maps should benefit from labelling improvement. And we 
hope we pushed the boundaries in what is feasible without any 
proprietary software a little bit.
Let's hope the reviewers see it likewise and we can share the work as 
soon as possible with everybody. Don't think we don't want to share, 
think of us as wanting to share very early as much as possible.

All the best,

Andreas Reimer

> Greetings,
>