[kwlug-disc] OpenStreetMap is pretty good now

[Andrew Sullivan Cant]

Hurray for an OSM post. :)

I noticed that the CBC website, through MapBox, and The Record site,
through Tableau, have both used OSM for some maps.

*
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/van-crash-yonge-finch-witnesses-1.4631972
* https://www.therecord.com/news-story/8670548-schools-struggle-to-go-green/


And since Paul made a feature request, I will mention that I am hoping
to organize some FLOSS contribution through KWRuby, and the OSM website
seems like it might be a good candidate project.

> https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website

Is this something that anyone here would be interested in? There are
lost of different technologies that you could work on:
* Ruby on Rails
* Javascript
* PostgreSQL

And I just noticed that there is translation work to be done as well!
> https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:OpenStreetMap

Andrew



On 2018-06-20 1:12 PM, Chamunks wrote:
> I actually have my https://rain-alarm.com pro app set to using OSM
> instead of Google maps.  I am definitely a huge Google Maps content
> participant ( one of their top photographers with almost 4 million views
> on my photos ) but I really like the way that OSM is coming along and
> generally prefer it when I can.
> 
> On Tue, Jun 19, 2018 at 9:36 AM Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc
> <kwlug-disc at kwlug.org <mailto:kwlug-disc at kwlug.org>> wrote:
> 
> 
>     For all my scripts turning Google calendars into newsletters and
>     booking meetings at Google community spaces, I actually try to use
>     alternatives to Google's services as much as possible.
> 
>     Maps have been a headache. Several years ago I tried OpenStreetMap and
>     it was pretty terrible. Finding locations was difficult, and I could
>     not figure out how to do route planning. Then I tried MapQuest, and
>     honestly it was pretty terrible too. So I kept falling back to Google
>     Maps when looking for unfamiliar routes.
> 
>     I tried OpenStreetMap again the other day and it is much better. I
>     find that I have to include provinces when looking up things
>     ("Kitchener, Ontario" instead of "Kitchener") but the search interface
>     actually finds locations now. Furthermore the interface supports route
>     planning well enough that I can judge the distance between locations,
>     which is mostly what I want (I don't care much for turn-by-turn
>     directions. I have paper maps and can read them myself).
> 
>     The one feature I miss are the elevation graphs that Google produces
>     for a route. OpenStreetMap knows about elevations and tells me total
>     ascents and descents, but does not graph them out. Oh well.
> 
>     It is nice that OpenStreetMap has gotten much better, because Google
>     Maps has gotten much worse. It has fallen prey to "click in the wrong
>     place and something both unexpected and unpleasant happens" syndrome,
>     and also "this website is getting too slow for my computer" syndrome.
>     Such is the modern web, I guess.
> 
>     - Paul
> 
>     -- 
>     http://pnijjar.freeshell.org
> 
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