[sclug] A quick mapping extravaganza in Reading

[Tom Chance]

Ahoy,

On Monday 11 September 2006 13:30, Derek M Jones wrote:
> > Perhaps I'm missing something but I don't see any place or street names,
> > or any way of zooming in & out or moving around, a la
> > [street|multi|google]map

Basically, the project is still quite young, so in typical fashion there has 
been more development effort going into the backend (e.g. data entry tools, 
trying to keep the server alive with all the pressure on it) than on 
frontends like multimap and google maps. Hopefully with more usable data, 
developers, interest, money, etc. really usable frontends will appear.

For now you can produce some nice looking bitmaps/SVGs/PDFs, which are at 
least sufficient for my needs (maps of nice cycle routes out of Reading, and 
of ethical places in town).
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Osmarender
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Mapyrus

In the long run OpenStreetMap could be *much* better for frontends simply 
because its data and APIs are open & Free, whereas with multimap et. al. 
you're dependent on interfaces they decided to code.


> The site is not very usable.  I have tried to sign up to add street
> names to roads and navigating the site is a nightmare.
>
> I'm sure they would get a lot more people helping them out if
> the site was easier to use.

It's something that people are aware of, with some people trying to improve 
things. I've edited a few wiki pages to clarify things, I'm sure that if you 
had some spare time you could help make it less of a nightmare :o) If not 
then perhaps come back in a few month's time and see if things have improved.

If you want to help this weekend we can show you how to do everything in 
person.

Kind regards,
Tom

-- 
The task of critique is not to denounce the ideals, but to show their 
transformation into ideologies, and to challenge the ideology in the 
name of the betrayed ideal (Fromm ? Beyond The Chains Of Illusion)