[OSM-talk] Nominatim weakness

[Greg Troxel]

malenki <osm_ at malenki.ch> writes:

> Do you realize that the map usually shows the region you did look at
> last? This may not necessarily be the region you want to have searched
> at thus making a "search on displayed map" quite useless.
> Sure looking at the location of the users IP address may help, but in
> my case it would locate me to a city 40 km to the west.
> For mobile users it may and should help to switch on locating services
> and allow OSM to use it.

Saying that having an option to prefer search results in/near the
displayed map is useless because going to osm.org defaults to one's last
view just does not make sense.    It would be perfectly reasonable for
someone to first find a city, and then search for something.

The tricky parts here are a good UI, and actually writing code.

UI-wise, it seems too complicated to insert options in the search bar.

But, in search results, it seems ok (UI wise) to have a toggle

Search within: [current view] [global]

and let the user click current.

That would enable server-side stats to see what is most often wanted.


I see mobile/location as a separate issue; just because I'm using a
phone doesn't mean I want to search where I am.   But if someone has
pushed the "pan map to my location" button, or otherwise set the map
location recently, perhaps search should default to local bias.

Another thought is that the search results in the viewport may be small,
at least for small areas, so showing them first and then saying "global
results:" may be a good compromise.

I acknowledge the fair criticism of this mail of "ENOPATCH" :-)

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