When working with OSM it’s generally fair to assume that textual data, like tag values, are encoded in UTF-8. Without this assumption, multilingual mapmaking would be almost impossible - custom fonts or browser settings would need to be specified for every language when displaying geocoding results, routing directions or map labels.

As part of the newly resurrected Engineering Working Group, I’m investigating ways to improve OSM’s software ecosystem. One of the top tasks for the EWG is localization, and standardized text encoding is a prerequisite for this, but OSM does not enforce any particular encoding as policy.

Where is the non-Unicode data?

The most obvious instance of non-Unicode in OSM is the Zawgyi encoding for Burmese text. For background on Zawgyi, see this post on the civil war between fonts in Myanmar.

The default Mapnik-based rendering on OpenStreetMap.org, openstreetmap-carto, uses Unicode fonts. Zawgyi-encoded tags appear obviously garbled on the map, with the combining mark ◌ visible:

… See full entry

Objective

For a while now I’ve been contributing in smallish countryside cities. While not small through their surface area nor their population count, they have a low proportion of active OpenStreetMap contributors and their urban development share a common pattern that is “downtown commercial arteries” leading me to classify them as “countryside cities” rather than “modern evolved and distributed cities”. Those commercial arteries are defined by a street network of mixed uses buildings with shops at ground level and housing at higher levels ; Walking down one of these street, one could model the facade as a succession of doors allowing access to either a shop or housings and that’s exactly what I am looking a software for.

Criterias

I have searched and tested multiple solutions in my journey but haven’t quite found the ideal one so far. The criterias I am looking for are as follows:

• Lightweight: I’m one of those still using old hardware limited both in memory and performance ;
• Offline map: I’m a cheap guy, allow me to cache the mapping area through WiFi before leaving home ;
• “Notes” creation rather than Waypoints: Most of the apps allows you to create “waypoints” on a GPS trace, while those have their use I definitely can’t use those as GPS function is rather battery intensive and high-rise buildings, or simply clouds, highly affects signal quality. Given a map (see aforementioned point) I would rather be allowed to pinpoint a location and add my own tags to it. Those data could then be exported to a computer to be processed through comparison with OpenStreetMap data.

While not dealbreaking, the app use could be extended through an uncluttered UI and workflow, a customizable presets to one-tap buttons function could make themed mapping parties a breeze, and pictures/voice records.

Tested solutions

Below are some solutions I tested with no success so far.

“Utility” solutions

… See full entry

I’m having a ton of fun trying to fix up my local community and close surrounding areas and other little interesting things. Here’s hoping that what I am doing will have an impact on someone’s journey thru town or even one of my fellow locals! I’m having a blast as a beginner, why didn’t I do this sooner?!

It took us 2 years, and 22 days but it’s now “complete.” 😉

Well, at least, all the published tasks has been completely reviewed, resulting in 39,129 mapped schools out of the 39,966 tasks. An additional 837 tasks has also been reviewed but was deemed unverifiable, or needed further information.

The school dataset was informally released to the OSM-PH community in 2013 but languished in the pipeline because of a murky data license until official permission to use it with OpenStreetMap was obtained in 2016. Even with that out of the way, it still needed tons of work before it was ready for use.

In October 2019, the cleaned-up dataset was made into a MapRoulette challenge, as a practical mapping exercise for MapAmore’s mentoring program for NSTP volunteer students from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines’ campus in San Juan City.

… See full entry

Currently upgrading around Mid-Selwyn area.

Including: - Residential areas - Buildings - Roads - Intersections - General tidying up

I would like to start by explaining that this is an exercise in imagination on how we could improve the UX/UI in the OSM profile, this means that some changes were based on my experience and there are still some things missing that I have not explored, like the Diaries, settings and Messages, I would love to get feedbacks from you!!!

More social and personal

… See full entry

When the current OSMF board some time ago spoke (during a board meeting) of the upcoming OSMF board election season as silly season i interpreted that as a indication of highly problematic collective and undifferentiated disrespect and loathing for the constituency (what we in German call Wählerbeschimpfung). I failed to consider that this would be prophetic regarding board members’ own actions during this time.

Compare:

osm.wiki/Foundation/AGM21/Election_to_Board#List

and last paragraph of:

osm.org/user/mikelmaron/diary/391498

(in the not unlikely case of retroactive censorship here is the permanent record).

OTOH of course the saying is: In a democracy people (collectively) always get the government they deserve…

The FOSS4G SotM Oceania Perth Hub conference program has just been announced, with a few things about OSM (including a small talk by me, but I’m not promising anything amazing!). The bit I’m most excited about is an OSM workshop all day on Saturday the 13th: everyone should come along, with laptops, cameras, and GPSs (or just a phone), and learn to edit the map!

What I did in OpenStreetMap in September 2021

(I was on holidays for a few weeks in September)

… See full entry

As a validator and #Slack validation channel visitor I am regularly confronted with complaints from fellow validators about the sometimes bad quality of the mappings of beginner mappers. This refers especially to buildings and to a lesser extent highways. Adding to the frustration is that instructive comments after invalidation of tasks hardly seem to be read by these same beginner mappers. The result is often that a task is invalidated several times for much the same reason(s).

Therefore validators can get the feeling that they are “fighting against all odds”. This can work as a demotivating factor. Possibly that even some validators quit validating.

Several solutions have been tried and applied. Ranging from getting the notifications more in sight within the Tasking Manager, limiting iD Editor in which features can be mapped to making Project authors creating their project more beginner friendly.

And of course there are the training webinars organized by the Training Working Group. These are good introductions for new mappers to get themselves onboard. However, they are imo mainly visited by the more motivated mappers. While the bulk of the problem is with the large group of casual mappers, of whom some only map incidentally (e.g. during a one-time mapathon event).

But why not attack the issue right from the start? Why not educate new mappers before they make their first edit?

There are several possibilities.

Sandpit

A virtual space where new mappers can exercise their skills and get some form of basic automatic feedback. Mimicking how mapping a real world task would look like. The mappings will not be saved in the OSM database, so mappers can make mistakes without consequences. Feedback is given automatically, through popups or messages in the margins. The ID Editor WalkThrough could serve as an example.

Quiz

… See full entry

Early in 2021, we at the Open Mapping Hub - Asia Pacific (OMH-AP) first began discussions to collaborate with the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM), through the World Scout Bureau/Asia Pacific Region (WSB/APR). Both organizations understood the atypical environment and the challenges we are all working around with amidst the pandemic. On the other hand, we also saw exciting and innovative opportunities to bring together technology and open-source mapping through OpenStreetMap (OSM), and the energy of the young people that WOSM is working with in the region.

We are delighted to share that the OMH-AP and WOSM, through WSB/APR have signed a Letter of Intent on October 17, 2021, signifying a three-year agreement between the two organizations. It captures our mutual commitment of creating and using up-to-date, high quality map data in OSM for humanitarian response and decision-making in the region. Through this partnership, we aim to mobilize the network of Scouts from their 30 national Scout organizations within the Asia-Pacific Region to map from the grassroots level. Both OMH-AP and WOSM recognize that to achieve this impact, it is vital to work together as part of a larger movement.

… See full entry

In case you are wondering what I am scheming with my recent changesets, I have started converting individually-named bodies of water on the Atlantic coast of Canada to relations. I started with Cobequid Bay, progressed out the Bay of Fundy to Passamaquoddy Bay and St. Marys Bay, and I have subsequently rounded Cape Sable Island and gotten as far northeast as Liverpool Harbour, progressing towards Halifax. What I am intending to do with this series of edits is to make relations for bodies of water throughout the entire coast of Canada, from the Bay of Fundy all the way to the Beaufort Sea. I have already done this for the Pacific coast, and I figured I might continue this through the rest of the coastal areas of the country. And this little pet project is going to take quite a bit of time to complete, given just how vast Canada is and how much coastline she has, the most out of any country in the world.

The Grind

After 13 days I today finished my review of all streets in Mülheim an der Ruhr, added the street name origin and roadkey ger: “Straßenschlüssel” where possible.

I have been casually adding street name origins for some time, an interesting topic if you are into history I think. At some point I set out to review all streets from A-Z, and while doing that add the roadkey too, as described in osm.wiki/DE:Key:de:strassenschluessel

Orientation and inspiration came from osm.wiki/Düsseldorf/Projekte/Straßennamen

Gladly Mülheim provides a list that had both, a name origin hint and a reference from that I could get the roadkey, on their website: https://geo.muelheim-ruhr.de/node/14033

Along the way I made some minor additions, on about 4 occasions OSM didn’t have the street name or was missing renames for instance.

After having worked through the list I verified the presence of “Straßenschlüssel” by Overpass:

[out:csv("name",
         "de:strassenschluessel_exists",
         "de:strassenschluessel",
         "local:strassenschluessel",
         "wikidata",
         "wikipedia",
         "wikimedia_commons",
         "name:etymology:start_date",
         "name:etymology:wikidata",
         "name:etymology:wikidata:missing",
         "name:etymology:wikidata:note",
         "name:etymology:wikipedia",
         "name:etymology:description",
         "name:etymology:note";
         yes;
         "|"
        )]
[timeout:250];

{{geocodeArea:Mülheim an der Ruhr}}->.searchArea;

(  
  wr[highway]
    [highway != platform] 
    [name]
    [!"de:strassenschluessel"]
    ["de:strassenschluessel_exists" != "no"]
    (area.searchArea);
); 

out geom;

… See full entry

The Compound

Go Map!! is now a desktop app for Mac, in the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/go-map/id592990211

Did anybody ask for a desktop version? In fact a few people did, but the primary reason to release it is “because we can.” Many people edit using iPad, and many of those people use mouse/keyboard, so adding support for those input methods got the app 80% of the way to full desktop support. Enjoy!

If you have a beautiful bunny sadly you can’t take them to a regular vet. You need “exotic experts”. This is true at least in Italy.

That’s why I tried to expand an OpenStreetMap RFC about veterinarians, to cover this case.

• osm.wiki/Proposed_features/veterinary

The result? See with your eyes:

https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1c7F

It’s absolutely amazing how somebody can expand OpenStreetMap so quickly to add useful metadata and being able to query them in realtime.

https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1c7F

Happy bunny!🐇

Village comes under Pusad Tahasil of Yavatmal District, Maharashtra, India,

This entry will be constantly updated based on my findings in USA.

Please be advised that a correct solution depicted below is not the only one. You are welcome to brainstorm in the comment section!

Hint: Right click on the picture to view in a new tab so you will see it in a better size.

1:

Wrong:

The reason why the intersection originally looks like this is to prevent reckless driving in rural area.

… See full entry

Versions: French /

Portuguese /

HOT website (English)

Together with the local communities/contributors from Vietnam, Madagascar and Mozambique, and Open Mapping Hubs (Asia-Pacific, and East & Southern Africa), I am very happy to share with you the collaboration Project: Localization as an Inclusion and Participatory Enabler (also available in French, Portuguese and Spanish).

Summary of the project details:

Context

Language barrier and the default to English puts non-English speakers at a systemic disadvantage throughout open mapping communities and humanitarian open mapping activities that HOT tries to support, resulting in significant missed participation and impact (Gayton, 2021) .

Motivation

We believe that language localization will enable inclusion and participation of underrepresented groups in mapping, dialogues and other humanitarian open mapping activities.

Goal

We aim to develop baseline data to inform a self-sustainable localization strategy to bridge the gap between language and accessibility of Open Mapping resources that serve communities involved in humanitarian / development work (see HOT’s Priority Countries).

Methodology

We will be running small experiments (i.e. translation workflows, and engagements) with local communities to test how localisation of resources could work in the main languages of 3 priority countries: Vietnam (Tieng Viet), Madagascar (French) and Mozambique (Portuguese).

Timeline (subject to change)

• June-July: Initial brainstorming, set-up and analysis on requirements (complete)
• August- September: Engagements with communities as collaborators in the experiments (complete)
• October - November: Experiments/Translations running

… See full entry

I can’t find my neighbors house or my front yard. Yep! This seems perfect for me