[HN Gopher] The current state of map design in OpenStreetMap
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The current state of map design in OpenStreetMap
Author : altilunium
Score : 132 points
Date : 2024-04-19 10:01 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (imagico.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (imagico.de)
| zetalemur wrote:
| Interesting read - there's a lot of progress in the open map
| styling scene and OSM maps with good data can make amazing maps
| and it has _many_ different features [0].
|
| It's also interesting to make maps directly from raw data (in
| this case that would be aerial imagery with mostly elevation
| data). E.g. if you find good training data you can easily make
| "land-cover" maps and although my example (of Austria) [1] does
| not have annotations (addresses, etc.), it's still nice to look
| at and has the benefit of being extremely compressible (compared
| to aerial raw imagery).
|
| [0] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_features [1]
| https://turmfalke.httpd.app/test.html
| orangesite wrote:
| So nice to see OSM still continuing to care about maps after
| Google abandoned their last remaining pretensions to cartography
| in favor of the almighty advertising dollar.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I know this is subjective, but I dislike most of the contemporary
| map design. Google Map is atrocious, the recent update to the
| color scheme is even worse. OpenStreetMap is at least information
| dense, and seems to have somewhat improved, but still doesn't
| look good to my eyes. Fuzzy text, ugly color palette (even if
| better than Google Maps). The one I kinda like is mapy.cz which I
| tend to use for hiking:
| https://de.mapy.cz/turisticka?x=13.1100771&y=47.1737326&z=16
| kibwen wrote:
| _> penStreetMap is at least information dense, and seems to
| have somewhat improved, but still doesn 't look good to my
| eyes._
|
| I want to make sure people are aware that there's many
| different map designs on OpenStreetMap.org, and all of them
| (for better or worse) are quite aesthetically different from
| each other. Check out
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/42.3580/-71.0725 and
| click the "Layers" button on the right to see a list (with
| previews) of each alternative design.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Also don't forget about apps like OrganicMaps and OsmAnd,
| which bring their own styles and technology, and, of course,
| downloadable off-line maps.
|
| For people on Android: get OsmAnd~ from F-Droid instead of
| Google's app store, and enjoy the unlimited version for free
| (alternatively: use the freemium version from Google Play, or
| pay for it).
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah I love OSMAnd especially since its new 3D mode. Which
| is really useful in my area that is far from flat. A normal
| map doesn't really work here even with contour lines.
| kiicia wrote:
| but most uses of osm are leaving default scheme, like public
| transport, embeded maps etc and defaulr osm scheme is bad to
| say the least
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| One company recently had some incident because their client had
| no possibility to choose the delivery location. Apparently
| someone changed the openstreetmaps which they're using on their
| page, in the way that their customer's street was renamed to some
| bad words on Andy Townsend
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Sorry, I don't buy this. The vandalism only persisted in the
| rendered map tiles due to CDN caching. Actual map data (which
| is input to the geocoding) was reverted very quickly by the DWG
| (moderators).
|
| This is also possibly a violation of Tile Usage Policy, you're
| not supposed to use OSM infrastructure in volume. OSM data is
| free, but hosting not so. Either self-host or use other
| providers.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Yeah, there was a bad bit of vandalism recently. The data was
| quickly restored though. This is not too different from
| vandalism on Wikipedia, but instead of facts getting mangled,
| navigation can be impacted.
|
| Odd that that company hit one of the bits of map which was
| impacted though; the chance of anyone actually hitting the bad
| data seems quite small (as in, lottery jackpot winning small).
| idoubtit wrote:
| > the chance of anyone actually hitting the bad data seems
| quite small (as in, lottery jackpot winning small).
|
| I saw it on a small cycling site that uses OSM's tiles. I was
| surprised and checked OSM's site for this French back-country
| and a few random places, and the offensive messages were
| still there.
|
| Even if the vandalism was purged after a few (dozens of)
| minutes, I suppose there were more witnesses across this
| short period than winners of lottery jackpots across this
| century.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Note that the author of this piece is also directly responsible
| for blocking the acceptance of many new features in Carto,
| including community-developed and broadly accepted features like
| highway=busway:
|
| https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/4...
|
| Carto is of course just one style for OpenStreetMap, but it is
| also the default style shown on openstreetmap.org, with direct
| support from the operational team (server resources etc.). If a
| high-profile feature is not rendered by Carto, gaps show up all
| over the world where people use Carto-based screenshots, etc.,
| and of course on openstreetmap.org.
|
| The stagnation of Carto, and thus openstreetmap.org, the website,
| is one of the major pain points for many mappers and developers
| in the OSM community, including myself. (It also highlighted the
| failure of the OpenStreetMap Foundation to deal with this
| situation, although the recent move to develop a successor vector
| style is somewhat hopeful).
|
| Personally, this makes me very hesitant to consider anything
| Christoph Hormann writes regarding OpenStreetMap in a positive
| light.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Agree! Outsiders sadly wouldn't have experienced this first-
| hand. The thing is, PR acceptance criteria aren't even firm. If
| imagico after a long back-and-forth decides he doesn't like it,
| then too bad for the prospective contributor.
|
| A similar situation holds with openstreetmap-website. Sadly
| currently barely anyone uses Rails...
| Macha wrote:
| Honestly even reading his prior blog post and this together,
| his own outline of his position made me feel there was more
| to it. Like the way I read it, they had a process of open
| contribution, and then they closed it down, partly at the
| author's suggestion, and then those contributors who felt the
| process was too onerous because of pushback against perceived
| euro-centrism of their contributions went and made their own
| projects.... which were more succesful for Europe and North
| America.
| Vinnl wrote:
| If you're willing to entertain more leisurely mappers like me
| (i.e. those unaware of what happens in the community), care to
| steelman their reasons for the blockade?
| Freak_NL wrote:
| I've read (and engaged with) everything in that issue, but I
| still don't understand the vague 'well the tag is just too
| loosely defined' argument.
|
| I mean, sure, there is some ambiguity around the exact limit
| of this tag, i.e., is it only meant for ways dedicated to
| rapid transit bus routes, or is it for ways dedicated to any
| bus performing a public transport role? That is a valid
| question (of the kind which tends to get answered in the OSM
| project with the passage of time and observing the actual
| usage of the tag), but, and at the end of the day, ways
| tagged with highway=busway are undeniably:
|
| a) roads;
|
| b) used by buses;
|
| c) unless otherwise indicated, not accessible to general
| traffic.
|
| Absolutely _refusing to render even a simple line_ after
| three and a half years (despite two PRs provided) is hard to
| explain as anything but antagonistic gatekeeping behaviour.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| The arguments in that discussion don't really make sense
| either. Such lanes exist outside Latin America too. Like
| the "busbaan" in Almere, Netherlands. Edit: And in Diemen,
| as pointed out above.
|
| But generally this "process-first" attitude makes me step
| back as a contributor immediately. I prefer doing something
| the wrong way and fixing it later instead of not doing it
| at all.
|
| The same thing totally antagonizes me against Wikipedia
| editors so I never participate there either.
| aendruk wrote:
| My reading of the situation is that, in general, they want
| the community to reach consensus on a globally appropriate
| data model and visual language, ultimately for the purpose of
| serving all of humanity, fairly. Given the unique position of
| influence held by this renderer, ad hoc iteration on it
| without holistic planning risks inadvertently establishing
| harmful precedent that might take years to correct, or worse,
| to notice at all if only underrepresented users are impacted.
|
| For the specific case of busways, this holistic planning
| simply has yet to occur.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > risks inadvertently establishing harmful precedent
|
| What sort of harmful precedents might be established?
| aendruk wrote:
| Modeling the world in a way that alienates or fails to
| serve people in specific places or cultures, creating
| undue technical burden on data consumers, causing pains
| that discourage mappers from contributing, dividing the
| already precariously small community, wasting volunteer
| time on later schema migrations
| Freak_NL wrote:
| > causing pains that discourage mappers from contributing
|
| Like not rendering (bus dedicated) roads despite them
| being tagged as (bus dedicated) roads using a tag
| approved by the community three and a half years ago. The
| openstreetmap.org website currently shows gaps all over
| the world wherever bus dedicated roads exist. This
| certainly discourages for mappers.
|
| Compare:
|
| Carto (default):
|
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/52.32853/5.04991&la
| yer...
|
| Tracestrack Topo:
|
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/52.32853/5.04991&la
| yer...
| aendruk wrote:
| Don't wait for me to do it; you can steelman too: It's
| plausible that the consequences of an actively wrong
| implementation would be more costly than this delay.
|
| Instead of just throwing costs at each other, you could
| acknowledge the other party's and then argue that yours
| are greater. (I personally would agree with you about
| this.)
| ricardobeat wrote:
| What are the odds, this random example points to only a
| couple km away from my home.
|
| I had never seen OSM for the area, the detail around
| Maxis is astounding. And the busway is quite relevant to
| understand traffic around the area.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| As an OSM contributor, the biggest pain for me is working
| hard to add data to the map only for it to not show up at
| all or look ugly.
|
| Bus routes? I've read the wiki pages in order to map
| them. I don't even ride the bus, I just wanted to add the
| data in. Why put in all that effort when the map won't
| even show it though?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| That sounds a bit far-fetched to be honest. Right now by
| not rendering them you're impacting everyone, not just some
| underrepresented users :)
| loceng wrote:
| Oh boy, global consensus? That's a big ask.
|
| Why not allow branches of divergence? You'll maintain a
| higher and increasing level of free help from a bigger base
| of contributors that way.
| wcedmisten wrote:
| There are kind of branches already (other layers have
| different styles [1]), but this debate is over the
| _default_ layer style, which appears on first page load
| of openstreetmap.org
|
| [1]: Transport Map Layer https://www.openstreetmap.org/#m
| ap=15/42.3594/-71.1051&layer...
| aendruk wrote:
| > global consensus?
|
| No, that's not what I wrote. It's local consensus on a
| system that is _fit for global use_ , which means being
| cautious about what concepts receive special treatment
| from the renderer.
|
| > not allow branches of divergence
|
| I'm not sure where you got this idea. It's explicitly
| licensed under CC0 and GitHub shows 800 forks. This
| freedom to diverge is one of the arguments in support of
| being conservative about changes to the common default.
| wcedmisten wrote:
| > But it is also visible, that despite Americana being a
| relatively young and not yet feature complete project by its own
| goals, it already struggles significantly with the technical
| limitations of the map rendering framework used and the
| commercially developed data schema it is built on.
|
| I wonder what goals of Americana the author feels are fallen
| short? [1]
|
| > The purpose of the Americana project is to:
|
| * Promote collaboration and shared purpose in the American
| mapping community
|
| * Express the American experience through cartography, taking
| inspiration from the familiar features of North American paper
| maps
|
| * Close technology gaps that impede the use of American
| cartographic principles. Where the technology to build our map
| doesn't exist, we will build it.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/osm-americana
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| He's talking about the OpenMapTiles vector tiles schema.
| breadwinner wrote:
| AAA maps are very legible. Here are some examples:
|
| https://www.aaa.com/aaa/common/mapgallery/pa/philadelphia.pd...
|
| https://www.aaa.com/aaa/common/mapgallery/ma/bostonandvicini...
|
| https://www.aaa.com/aaa/common/mapgallery/or/portlandandvici...
|
| https://www.aaa.com/aaa/common/mapgallery/dc/washingtondcand...
|
| https://www.aaa.com/aaa/common/mapgallery/ny/newyorkvicinity...
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