[OSM-talk] Coastline updates

Jochen Topf jochen at remote.org
Fri Nov 22 09:51:27 UTC 2013


On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 09:24:46PM -0800, Paul Norman wrote:
> > From: Jochen Topf [mailto:jochen at remote.org]
> > Sent: Monday, November 18, 2013 8:13 AM
> > To: talk at openstreetmap.org
> > Subject: [OSM-talk] Coastline updates
> > 
> > Hi!
> > 
> > For the last about two weeks we haven't gotten any coastline updates
> > through. The problem is that every day there is something broken 
> > somewhere with the coastline. Often problems get fixed the same day, 
> > but new problems show up the next.
> 
> Can't osmcoastline localize these problems to a small area? Coastcheck
> kept any errors from impacting entire continents, even when there were 
> high numbers of errors. I remember it finding 2k errors when I started
> running it regularly!

Osmcoastline fixes small gaps in the data. I don't know of anything more
coastcheck did. If anybody can give me any algorithms how to fix the
data or "localize these problems", please do.

> We're always going to have local coastline errors, so we have to figure
> out how to recover from them

I think we have to face it: The approach of allowing the user to add
anything to the map and later fix it has failed. I strongly believed in
it for the longest time. But I don't any more. We have to have stronger
guarantees in the data structures and more checks in editors and in
the API. Remember, the "coastline" is one of the easier problems there.
Boundaries are much more complicated. Having spent months already on this
"easy" problem, I don't see how our limited ressources are going to solve
this if we don't tackle the problem in a very different way.

Jochen
-- 
Jochen Topf  jochen at remote.org  http://www.jochentopf.com/  +49-721-388298



More information about the talk mailing list