User talk:Ojw

From OpenStreetMap

City template problem

Sorry for the problem with the city template. The reason was that on Karlsruhe I clicked on the edit link in the page (not the one in the tab at the top). This then sends you to the edit page for the template and not for the original page, which I think is very confusing. Maybe you can fix this somehow?

-- User:Joto

Nice UK map

Hi Ojw. I was just looking at your PHP rendering work. Looks great! I particularly like your UK map. It's the first time I've visually had a feel for how much of the UK is mapped out. It's a shame the online view of the UK doesn't look more like this. -- Harry Wood 10:00, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Problems with OSM interface

Have you tried osmeditor? Erik Johansson 12:10, 18 Jun 2006 (UTC)

I've just been trying to compile it this week, although the reason for that is that I want to display current GPS position on osmeditor and use it as a moving-map

looking at the source-code I'm wondering if Nick's already added a gpsd interface...

As far as editing goes, I'm using JOSM, but I still think that Java is a PITA - it's a stupidly large download that takes days to obtain on a modem, it's contaminating my computer with non-free software, and it can't be downloaded using apt-get like all normal software (meaning I'll never get updates if they find a security problem with the JVM)

I agree on all you points, but when it's installed java works fine. Besides Josm and some other great applications make good use of it, and it enables me to recommend it to other people not running Linux. The apt-get PITA is a grave one, but as an barbaric pragmatical user I just blame Debian legal/SPI.. ;-) Erik Johansson 07:17, 19 Jun 2006 (UTC)

I realise that this probably doesn't help, but Ubuntu can install java with apt-get. I realise that some people believe that Ubuntu is evil, so that's fine if you do. Apparently java is to be made open source at least, but mabye notBruce89 16:43, 19 Jun 2006 (UTC)

apt-get for Sun Java 1.5, as required by JOSM? I thought it could only install GNU classpath which is apparently inferior. Ojw 17:18, 19 Jun 2006 (UTC)

sudo aptitude install sun-java5-jre

installs Java 1.5, it is in Dapper's Multiverse. Licencing changes by Sun mean that distros can now include in their repositories. See vnunet story. Mabye GCJ could be supported with JOSM? - Bruce89 17:27, 19 Jun 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - that's pretty useful know about! Ojw 17:58, 19 Jun 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Bruce, I do need to upgrade my ubuntu first, which I'm reluctant to do atm.. Erik Johansson 08:24, 3 Jul 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about the late reply, but Sun's java is only available in Dapper (6.06 LTS) and above. Bruce89 12:12, 8 Aug 2006 (BST)

POI -> OSM

Do you have a nice "work flow" for how to get things into OSM? That is how would you like to work and what would the tools need to get you job done as fast as possible? Erik Johansson 12:10, 18 Jun 2006 (UTC)

At what level are you asking? For suggested tweaks to the existing tools, for tutorials on how to use the tools, or for long-term ideas of where the editing software might go?

As an example, I responded to some of Nick's research with a little sketch of a PDA editing interface I thought might be neat: User:OJW/DataGatherNotes. But it's not something that I'd buy a phone or PDA for, although it might be nice to attach to the laptop in my car (e.g. buttons on the steering wheel for "we've just passed a roundabout - mark it!")

I use a modded mouse for this on my bike. As in I removed the plastic casing and used ducttape to fasten it to my cycle handlebars (can I write "my cycle handlebars") Erik Johansson 07:17, 19 Jun 2006 (UTC)

Another example, I wrote something to let you upload waypoints easily, name them, mark them as pubs, etc. and upload them to OSM as nodes all through a web interface [1]. If you've got notes that make reference to waypoints, that would let you find them¹ and make editing easier. That project has stalled at the moment, as I can't figure out how to upload nodes to OSM using PHP (all the libraries I try are either not installed on my host's PHP installation, or give various error codes when connecting to OSM, or just plain don't create the node)

1: My current method for integrating waypoints with OSM is to view the waypoint on my GPS screen, or in the GPX source code, them move the mouse around in JOSM until the lat/long numbers match, and put a node there. There are various things that would be nice in JOSM, e.g. typing a coordinate in and having it marked on screen (and it's a short step from there to marking your current position from the gpsd file) and I've put a few ideas as JOSM feature requests in trac

That's horribly tedious... So you want waypoint integration in JOSM, so josm can higlight waypoints that have been loaded form the GPX file, would that be a good idea?Erik Johansson 07:17, 19 Jun 2006 (UTC)

That would be good, to display waypoints in JOSM. It can already load waypoint files, but they just display as grey dots the same as any other points (can't select them to view the name or anything).

The other good feature for JOSM would be for it to read a lat/long from a file, and monitor that file for changes - if the file is created by a gpsd script, it would let you do editing directly while you move, by seeing your current position on the JOSM map.

You know you can change the colour of a GPX track/waypoints? Wouldn't it be hard to work with a moving map? Erik Johansson 14:57, 19 Jun 2006 (UTC)

Finding them isn't so much a problem, as knowing which one is "waypoint 113, start of Birch Street". Your colour suggestion is still useful though, as it makes it easier to find waypoints if you know their approximate area.

Moving map wouldn't necessarily have to follow your position (though would be nice when you're not trying to edit), just display it and let the user zoom around themselves.

Just a note that there's now a tool for importing lists of waypoints. Ojw 23:33, 6 Aug 2006 (BST)

Why don't we have any tags?

While generating PDF atlas, one of the things which stood-out about OpenStreetmap data was the lack of tags. Projects like WikiProject United Kingdom Motorways have marked roads as 100% complete when they comprise only generic unlabelled segments, indistinguishable from a farm track by anything other than their two-lanes and slip-road junctions.

At the time this was done there was no support for ways, and nothing that rendered anything, and the only scheme for tagging was the class scheme (which was pretty rudimentary). There seemed to be no point in adding tags until ways and a decent renderer were developed. Even now the creation of very long ways doesn't seem to be very practical. 80n 20:50, 2 Jul 2006 (UTC)

Organisationally, none of the ideas developed by the Map Features people are getting across to the Editing people.

It's a travesty that the applet promotes the use of the class tag when the best scheme at the moment is Map Features. Map Features isn't perfect and is very Anglo-centric, but is currently the best documented, most well thought out and most comprehensive scheme that we have. 80n 20:50, 2 Jul 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't call "highway=byway" anglocentric ;-)

What would be really good is some server-side rules that just go through the data slowly, correcting stuff. e.g.

"Name=x" to "name=x"
"amenity=pub" to "amentiy=public_house" (or whatever the preferred version is)
"class=primary" to "highway=primary" (if that's what we're using)
"highway=railway" to "railway=rail"

It would be interesting to see how JOSM chooses its dropdown list of tag names too - it often seems to put "Name" as the default, when osmarender prefers lowercase.

Noone's being lazy either - the editors have each taken the time to trace-out an entire motorway, marking junctions and roundabouts and all-sorts. I think it's just not obvious to people using the editors what meta-data is available for them to add.

Until there is some way for the users to pick a tagging scheme this will continue. IMHO all tags should be prohibited until a user selects a tagging scheme, otherwise they might as well enter total rubbish (like freeway=turnpike, oneway=left, bike=cannondale) for all the good it will do anyone. 80n

On the online editor, or on JOSM, you get your GPS trace, and create a white line showing the road. That's it - there's nothing you can do in the editor that will make your road look any better than a white line. If you somehow figured-out that you were supposed to add "highway=motorway" to the road, it wouldn't magically turn blue and get displayed with motorway symbols. And if you looked at other, well-tagged motorways, they'd look just the same as your generic line segments. There's no feedback, no way of showing people what they've got, and comparing it to what they can aim for. And precious little instruction (you can't mark a segment as railway, you have to set railway=rail)

Agreed. Without WISIWYG we will not attract the masses that are needed to cover the whole planet. 80n 20:50, 2 Jul 2006 (UTC)

Hopefully with osmarender PHP rendering and PDF atlas and Freemap and all the rest, we'll start to see how bare the maps look, and start putting in the meta-info. But will it be too late, after the person who entered the route in JOSM has moved onto something else, without ever realising that they were supposed to type "highway=motorway;Name=M1;oneway=yes" into the editor, and line-up all the segments in a particular order?

It is still very early days for the project. There is an enormous amount of mapping to be done. But because there is very little guidance, and because the best scheme is Anglo-centric, the tagging of ways is nowhere near as good as it needs to be. 80n 20:50, 2 Jul 2006 (UTC)

Rendering ways

BTW There are far too many renderers that do a good job of segments, but don't deal with tags on ways. This is really destructive as it encourages people to tag segments and not to tag or create ways. Tags on segments should be prohibited (except where they override an identical tag on a way - and even then I'm not sure that is a good idea). 80n 20:50, 2 Jul 2006 (UTC)

Which renderers? Maybe we should create a page where people can report things they'd like changed in the renderers (like the Proposed map features page, but for bug reports as well as enhancement requests). Or just use wiki pages as we do already...

pps. I'm thinking it might be useful to have a program which autogenerates osmarender stylesheets, so that you can add feature types (and handle mistagged segments) without a lot of cutting/pasting.

Caching

(Not posted to the dev mailing list, as the people there are busy enough without getting all the complaints yet)

I was just showing someone how to use JOSM to edit their railway journeys yesterday, but when we went to openstreetmap.org to view their handiwork (even 24 or 48 hours later), the railway wasn't visible. The journey was too long to render it easily (why can't JOSM export "only data within the current view" so that we can render the area we're working on?) so the person was left not knowing what they contributed to the project.

Airports

How did you get the airport data into Cranfield and Waddington? Is this from DAFIF? Bruce89 21:05, 6 Aug 2006 (BST)

I traced it from Landsat photos using the openstreetmap.org online editing applet. Ojw 21:40, 6 Aug 2006 (BST)

Although it looks like at least one person got a GPS tracklog down Heathrow runway...

I'm afraid to say that the diagonal runway has been closed to planes, it is just a taxiway now. Bruce89 10:56, 7 Aug 2006 (BST)

I'll put together a list of "tags" for runways sometime. They tend to need things like length, width, surface, active/inactive, private/military/civil, etc. Ojw 11:05, 7 Aug 2006 (BST)

Take a look at the proposed features page/airports section. I just added an example render of Copenhagen airport and the osmarender2 rules I used for it. The data for the runways where taken from the AIP documents for Copenhagen Airport. The AD (Aerodrome Description) document gives the lat/lon for the runway thresholds, and the ADC (Aerodrome Description Chart) shows the runways and taxiways with a lat/lon grid overlaid, making it easy to plot and name the taxiways. AIP documents for the various aerodromes should be available from the various national CAA's. Dutch 11:03, 20 Aug 2006 (BST)

Almien Coastlines request

Could you please do a coastline for the Isle of Amager (the island where Copenhagen airport is locate. It should be in the NGA CD21 shape files, somewhere around 55.65320,12.64406 Dutch 11:07, 20 Aug 2006 (BST)

Starting now. It's tile 22 (lookup PGS tiles) Ojw 17:43, 20 Aug 2006 (BST)

Current coastlines situation

I was confused by your comment here. It seemed to me that this needed thrashing out as a proper discussion, hence I set up the section: Proposed features/Coastline#Deprecation?

...but since then, everyone I've asked about it (including chatting to User:80n at the mapping party on Saturday) have never heard of the deprecation purge idea, and certainly don't support it. But you wrote the script, so you probably know better than anyone. What's the current recommendation for coastline? Is it a case of "Run the script for areas you are interested in, but don't get carried away" ? -- Harry Wood 12:22, 10 September 2007 (BST)

Yes, anyone mapping an area is encouraged to import coastlines for that area if they don't already exist. Ojw 13:39, 10 September 2007 (BST)

Star's

Hi, I notcied you have been adding superstars to images. I created set of stars a short while ago. Since you use the stars, I wondered if you recon there should be some standardisation of stars (as in example). Also the superstar seems to have been used for images and for people. Should there be a different superstar for images do you think? http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Image:Allstars.PNG Ben 17:00, 16 Sept 2006 (BST)

Create or find a better image and add it to the Template:Featured page - the superstar is only there as a placeholder until someone comes up with a more appropriate image. Ojw 17:04, 16 September 2006 (BST)

tilesPipe@Home

I figured out, what caused the login to fail: if the Zip gets too big (no idea how big exactly but in the 6-11 MB range) the php apparently doesn't get the username and the login fails. apparently the upload.pl hangs at this point, not really getting the information that the upload has been rejected. --Deelkar (talk) 01:52, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

furthermore the compress.pl should first move the PNGs to a (Temporary) subdir, pack them there and then delete them otherwise PNGs generated while compressing the first batch will get deleted. This step can also be used to keep the zip size down for the upload. --Deelkar (talk) 02:06, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

also I noted some projection errors (?) documented here: Image:Z12_X2148_Y1332_to_X2149_Y1332.png --Deelkar (talk) 02:53, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

They won't align with tiles generated by the old tiles@home program, since that does additional projections inside each tile that the tilespipe doesn't Ojw 12:36, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

tiles@home account

I would like to use an unuserd Dual Xeon Server (running FC6) to render tiles.
I'm installin all the pieces on my laptop for testing. --EdoM (Parliamone) 16:04, 24 April 2007 (BST)

Email me (I can't really send your password via a wiki talk page!) Ojw 19:23, 24 April 2007 (BST)

I sent you an E-Mail with an Account request, did you rescived it? Cant wait let my PC work for tiles@home :-) --falstaff 12:07, 24 Ocotober 2007 (UTC+2)

Hi! I sent you an email with an account request for t@h. Thanks! --Accurimbono 08:35, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

MapOf wallpaper

I just love the MapOf wallpaper generation that you have put into Template:Place, however i feel that it is missing an OSM or & CC or logo in some corner. Could that be easily put on the map as a last step? Perhaps also "openstreetmap.org", so that anyone can simply use the image anywhere, easily, legally. Tnx, Stefanb 13:58, 15 June 2007 (BST)

maybe the small logos should be used for images smaller than eg 300x300 and normal logos otherwise. -- Stefanb 18:25, 15 June 2007 (BST)

Yes the MapOf wallpaper is neat. What's its proper name? This kind of thing (url parameters for fetching maps) gives lots of potential for simple mapping mashups. In fact take a look at MediaWiki plugin. I've sketched out some ideas on that page, with the assumption that something like this will be available. Just some ideas. Feel free to edit! -- Harry Wood 18:37, 10 July 2007 (BST)

This Simple image MediaWiki Extension is now installed and running on this wiki (as of London Hack Day) Example:

If people start making extensive use of this (which they haven't yet) then your MapOf script will start seeing some more action, but if you look at the SRC url there, we're pointing browsers at firefishy's proxy, so that'll take the strain. Also we deployed the Slippy Map MediaWiki Extension at the same time. Maybe this will end up being used more

-- Harry Wood 21:29, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Did the MapOf service switch projections or something? Images are coming through horizontally squashed. This is a problem on all the wiki pages which use the plugin (<map> syntax). For example WikiProject United Kingdom -- Harry Wood 21:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

MapOf with mapnik??

Hi, I use your MapOf script to create wallpapers as described here: Wallpaper and i have a question about that here: Talk:Wallpaper. Thanks in advance....

MapOf with marker

Hi,

We want to use the MapOf Site in a program called "Geocache Scanner". We want to create an image with coordinates of the geocache in the middle, but we need an marker on that point. The german mailinglist said I should ask you. Perhaps you can give us the source code, that we can implement the feature. Thanks in advance. John07 --John07 14:33, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Video.py problems

Hi! some days ago you pointed me to the render.py and video.py in svn.
I'm just trying the scripts but i encounter some problems. I suppose you are the script creator, so can i ask you?

problem 1: timestamps

I have some tracklogs form different devices. While the render.py does'nt care about the timestamp format, the video.py request the timestamp as

<time>2006-10-28T10:06:03Z</time>

but some devices (Nokia Sport Tracker) add the second fraction to the timestamp

<time>2008-01-06T10:22:03.85</time>

so the script will exit on error. My device (a Windows PDA with OSMtracker) sepatate the minutes from second with a dot and not a colon.

<time>2008-01-06T07:36.48Z</time>

Could you modify the script to manage this kind of issue? --EdoM (lets talk about it) 10:20, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Try something like "text[17] = ':'" before interpreting it? Ojw 13:48, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

problem 2: video rendering

once i fix the timestamp in the wrong files, when i try to have the video rendered i obtain this error:

[marascalchie@edomobile video rendering]$ python video.py 
Loading data
 * Luca.gpx
 * 20080106 083644.gpx
 * Roberto.gpx
 * 20080106-1329-pavia-tracklog.gpx
 * 20080106-1329-pavia-waypoints.gpx
 * Davide.gpx
Read 14359 points in 6 files
Calculating extents
Centred on 45.092486, 9.222541
 - Lat 45.047486 to 45.137486, Long 9.158799 to 9.286284
 - Ratio: 1.416502
Creating image 720 x 600 px
Outputting to out_m.mpg at 720 x 600
Title...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "video.py", line 499, in <module>
    TracklogPlotter.drawTitle()
  File "video.py", line 417, in drawTitle
    self.video.addFrame(self.surface, 70)
  File "video.py", line 52, in addFrame
    buf = surface.get_data_as_rgba()
AttributeError: 'cairo.ImageSurface' object has no attribute 'get_data_as_rgba'

I don't know python so i can't troubleshot the error. --EdoM (lets talk about it) 10:37, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

as poined out on ML, the problem should be the surface.get_data_as_rgba() was replaced by get_data() and i'm trying to modify the code, but i can't find any documentation about pycairo! --EdoM (lets talk about it) 17:35, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

i'm still trying to have a render going. If i change get_data_as_rgba() to get_data() i have this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "video.py", line 501, in <module>
    TracklogPlotter.drawTitle()
  File "video.py", line 419, in drawTitle
    self.video.addFrame(self.surface, 70)
  File "video.py", line 58, in addFrame
    s= pygame.image.frombuffer(buf, (self.width,self.height), "RGBA")
TypeError: char buffer type not available

any idea? --EdoM (lets talk about it) 16:06, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I managed to resolve the problem just writing every single frame to a png and loading it in pygame. I can send you the patched code. --EdoM (lets talk about it) 16:28, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Featured images

Hi,

as I see you are involved putting featured images on the main page. On the proposal page I read "Once consensus is reached here..." but I can not find where the consensus was reached. Because I would like to see my image "Map with individual POI display" on the main page which I uploaded already some weeks ago and I would like to know where and how I can support my image to reach the consensus. Thanks, --Plenz 15:46, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

"Consensus" seems to mean "lack of objections" on the featured image proposals page, so maybe the phrase needs changing.

The POI map will be featured (perhaps even next week) but it would be nice to have the description written in 3rd person (i.e. as a description rather than a message, e.g."my brand new program": -> "Plenz' website"). Ojw 12:46, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. Meanwhile Frederik told me what to do. I supposed that I only had to add my picture on the "proposal" page, then it would be discussed and after that it would be moved to the "featured" list. That's why I asked. I did not know that I can insert my picture by myself.

I changed the text and hope, it is better now. If not, please let me know. --Plenz 08:11, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

T@H

Hi Ojw, i tried to send you an email to get an account for T@H. Did you receive one? It is from an @web.de account. --Beckmi 14:15, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I have several emails to do, so probably yes. Ojw 16:52, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. --Beckmi 14:01, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

SOTM2008 - Need lift to Limerick?

I see you arriving at 15:40 on 10th July. I will arrive 17:50 and pick up a hire car - lift available if you want to travel down that night Michael Collinson mike _atthingie ayeltd.biz

Thanks. I have a hotel room in Dublin on Thursday evening, so I can't leave for Limerick until Friday. That would be too late for you? Ojw 21:58, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Rotating images

You can simply use mogrify, it's the "batch conversion" part of Imagemagick. "mogrify -rotate 90 *" rotates all images in the folder. HannesHH

http://dev.openstreetmap.org/~ojw/api/?/map/ down?

Hi Ojw, since yesterday I'm playing around with pyroutelib2. I'd like to understand how it works and probably contribute to it. My target is an online routing app for OSM. I'd like to move the cache from filesystem to a database with expire date and access number to each tile (probably older than 3 days OR accessed > 3 times => reload?). I'm experimenting with Google appengine and it's datastore for this purpose.

Since about 3 hours ago, http://dev.openstreetmap.org/~ojw/api/?/map/ returns nothing anymore. Did you notice my excessive access and turn it down? Will it go live again? Or do you have any suggestion how I can set something similar locally? I don't mind if I have to download the planet file and setup MySQL for that.

Thanks for the lib and all around it. --Indomapper 14:50, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi. Yes I notice the problem too, although I haven't investigated it yet. I think it's been like that for a week or more? As far as I can tell it contains data for central London but nowhere else. See http://dev.openstreetmap.org/~ojw/phprender/ for the limits (although you can't zoom-out on that map yet). Ojw 20:41, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Two days ago and yesterday morning, everything was fine. And it returned nice data for Indonesia too, that's what I am experimenting with. Update: I just checked, now everything works again (both London and Indonesia). Thanks for the help. I hope you don't mind me using it until I have another solution. I'll let you know if I have something to show. --Indomapper 09:27, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi again, the online routing app is almost ready. Before it goes live, I want to ask your permission for using your API. I don't know how many people will be interested on using it. I myself found it's useful for finding routing errors in the map. If it hits your server too much, just let me know and I'll take it offline, so please give me your permission :-). The other thing is, I noticed that the data is about one month old. Do you have any plan on updating it? Thank you. --Indomapper 10:24, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

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