Блогчетање

Wed, 25 Jun 2008

I managed to upload data to OSM servers using JOSM—though I had to patch it for Cyrillic usernames (well, any non-Latin-1 characters). Thanks to Bruce Cowan for pointing me in the right direction earlier when it came to uploading existing OSM files.

Intersections or overlapping?

Thus, I was able to map most of Zemun's Donji Grad (and a few nearby streets of Novi Beograd), but with a few problems I can't seem to be able to solve.

The biggest issue I am running into is joining ways—some of them seem to not look like intersections, yet they share a node. At least when rendered with mapnik—osmarender looks fine.

Osmarender looks better: or at least doesn't show the same defects?

I'd really like to resolve this, because I want these streets to be actually connected. I've tried inserting 'junctions', but that didn't help. Any suggestions?

Alternative and localised naming

Other thing I wonder about is about alternative names, and localised names (for streets and objects). I am making use of old_name, name:en and name:sr tags, but I couldn't find any official policy on naming.

I have so far defaulted to using Serbian Cyrillic for street names, but will soon switch them to Latin script, and put Serbian as name:sr tags. I suspect search on OpenStreetMap will return both, but will need to wait for confirmation for a few days. I am also still hoping to render Cyrillic names, though, so I may need to set up a separate tile generator on my own server. Or not?

[08:21] | [] | # | G | | TB

Another issue is OSM broken use of Title Capitalization Conventions even for countries where it is not the norm, reproducing the Title Case mess that made music metadata databases next to useless for some regions (didn't they learn anything? You can add caps in software, you can't remove them in software since it does not know what is real names Caps and what is Title Case fake casing)

Yay for blind USA imperialism!
— Posted by Nicolas Mailhot at Wed Jun 25 09:03:14 2008

For the intersections problem, I would not worry, it seems to be a renderer's (mapnik) problem, so there's no property you can set to fix it. So much better if you just file a bug for mapnik
— Posted by Rodrigo Moya at Wed Jun 25 10:29:05 2008

@Nicolas: hmm, I remember that titlecase discussion from somewhere :-)

@danilo: the name tag should have the local name in local script, so Serbian Cyrillic is good. In places where there is more than one official language, it means that the name tag has more than one name.

about the junction rendering: I can't see anything wrong with it. The junctions are well connected. The only thing I'm not sure of is your usage of the landuse tag on highway, landuse is for areas. You could use the abutters tag for what you want to do. Mapnik has specific rules for rendering primary on top of residential roads, so this really shouldn't happen. The only thing I can think of is that the landuse tag messes that up somewhat, but even that shouldn't do it... But it strikes me that the primary roads that render correctly are the ones without the landuse tag.
— Posted by Ben at Wed Jun 25 11:25:48 2008

Thanks all: I'll investigate how mapnik behaves when I remove landuse tags (I don't remember adding them explicitely, so it might be something Merkaartor has added earlier, or that I use a wrong "preset" in JOSM), and I already removed them from the server: I have added them only inadvertently. I'll report a bug when I narrow it down. (Unfortunately, mapnik tiles have already been regenerated so I may need to test this locally)

As far as naming goes, I'll go with Serbian Cyrillic for 'name', and add 'name:en' for Serbian Latin names: hopefully that will do for those doing searches with Latin alphabet.

As far as titlecasing goes, I never thought of doing that, and boy, would it look ugly and out-of-place with Serbian (so, I can understand your frustration, Nicolas :)). Since I haven't found anything resembling a naming policy for OpenStreetMap, I wouldn't worry about it, but if you ever need a hand in convincing someone that titlecasing is silly, I'd be welcome to chip in.
— Posted by Danilo at Wed Jun 25 13:06:07 2008

I'm just getting started with OSM but it seems Russia uses cyrillic, Israel uses hebrew etc and it all shows up as expected on the main osm mapnik tileserver so if cyrillic is what you'd use locally I'd go for it.

This seems to be backed up by http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Map_Features#Naming which suggests following whatever the local street signs use.

I just checked out Tokyo and noticed:

a) they have both name:ja and name:ja_rm as well as name:en for some with rm (romaji?) being the romanised version.
b) They seem to use both with the romanised version in brackets for the default name without a language specifier. (I wonder if that's what the street signs use?)
c) neither mapnik nor osmarender get the non-roman version right, both breaking in different ways.
d) the tiles@home tileserver used by default on openstreetmap.jp does better with the japanese, but seems to not have the ability to stop names colliding when clustered too close.
— Posted by dave at Wed Jun 25 13:06:37 2008

Serbian Latin names probably should be name:sr@latn=*, as it isn't actually English. The name=* tag is the only one that is rendered (for now) however, so this should be the default for the area. For instance, the Western Isles off Scotland use Gaelic, so name=* is places' Gaelic names, and name:en=* is their English name.
— Posted by Bruce Cowan at Wed Jun 25 13:41:16 2008

As far as I understood it from the wiki, name= should be used for the official name of a city/street/whatever as it is rendered by default. name:lang is also used in the search engine.
— Posted by DeeJay1 at Wed Jun 25 19:17:42 2008

@Nicolas Mailhot, OpenStreetMap was founded in the UK and that is where all the main developers are from. In the US all the mapping data is public domain. In the UK it's all under strict copyright, so the project started in the UK

I believe the correct OSM approach is to use what ever the street sign on the ground says, in what ever that language is. Use serbian in cyrillic if that's what it says.

I'd advise against using name:en=* for latin transcriptions of serbian names. perhaps something like name:sr_latin=* or something.
— Posted by Rory McCann at Thu Jun 26 14:14:25 2008

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Данилово блогче

Wed, 25 Jun 2008

Intersections or overlapping?

Alternative and localised naming