Getting the UK map going...

Unfortunately I don't have the time to help with this, but I hope you don't mind some back-seat driving. My main piece of advice would be to take the time to reduce the scope of the project as much as possible - from experience, I know that creating the server software, developing the cartography, and building a team from scratch to do either are three big challenges. So I would suggest a quick win is to commit to only using off-the-shelf tileserving software, whether that's mod_tile, tessera, tileserver-gl, tilestache or alternatives - but avoid coding another one.

@gravitystorm Thanks for that - yes, the plan was to use an existing tileserver - the server-side development I had in mind was more for additional features over and above the rendering e.g. allowing contributors to add missing designation tags, etc, and sync them with the main OSM database. I'd be looking for something which allows a fair degree of control e.g. allowing tiles to be re-rendered on demand, I was thinking that one nice feature would be to allow users to add new pubs (say) and have them re-rendered instantly and synced with the main OSM database. But this is probably all subject for a future discussion.

I am happy to help with some coding and the UX. I doing a lot of node.js / express stuff and work mostly with Leaflet but also with Openlayers.

@dennisbauszus thanks!

Thanks everyone who's joined this group. Would be great if we can have some discussion about the cartography, as I have some ideas and have done my own custom rendering, but am by no means a cartography expert.

Most ideas I do have relate to countryside mapping. Earlier discussions suggest something inspired by Landranger; I would agree as it is the style most familiar to UK walkers. A combination of Landranger style rendering and Explorer style detail? Perhaps something like http://geo.gy/ (Grough Map) but with Landranger style rights of way and, crucially, field boundaries?

Contours should of course be included, are we legally OK using the Ordnance Survey OpenData for this if it's on a separate database and composted with the tiling software (this is another reason why a flexible and scriptable tileserver would be nice)? Hill shading (from the same source) would also be good.

I would also include stiles and gates at higher zoom levels, and maybe signposts too. What would be nice in mountainous areas is to indicate crags in the same way the OS do on their Explorer maps.

Have different types of field boundary rendered differently? e.g. fence, hedge and wall? Render ditches as a "sunken" effect?

Show permissive bridleways and footpaths in a less intense version of the RoW colours, perhaps magenta? Early versions of Freemap did this; OS use orange but this maybe clashes with contours.

Cycle paths in blue?

Pubs, teashops and restaurants with icons?

Anyway that's a few ideas, but obviously we need a good deal more, so would be great to see a discussion on this.

Hi

One question I would ask at this stage is what is the overall intended purpose? Is this a “shop window” map that shows what can be done? A map designed for people to use to navigate in rural/urban areas? Is it a map that can be used for QC specifically related to the UK. i.e. PROW tagging? I’m sure it could be a mixture of all three but colour coding to identify tags, whilst useful for people editing the map may be a bit confusing for people that want to use it for just navigation.

I guess one answer to the above is to have more than one rendering.

If the intention is to mark rights of way then this may not be easy if you also want to differentiate the access=private tag on a highway that the main OSM site does. I would also suggest you may need to move away from a single dashed line for a track and adopt the OS double dashed line so the PROW line can be drawn in the middle.

Having just had someone delete a service=driveway tag arguing that the OSM site display footways at a zoom level before this I would suggest taking a careful look at when highways appear so driveways link up to footways at all relevant zoom levels.

If we are looking to OS like but also differentiate ourselves from the standard OS rendering:

Andy’s map differentiates between walls/fences and hedges and renders them at low zoom levels. It is also a useful feature for QC. It would be challenging to differentiate between walls and fences but would show what OSM is capable of. https://map.atownsend.org.uk/maps/map/map.html#zoom=15&lat=53.02012&lon=-1.73005

Rendering, gates, stiles, kissing gates would be good. As you get older it is good to avoid step over stiles!

One big advantage of OSM is the detail you can put in when navigating through farmyards and residential areas (ex farmyards). OS maps lacks this and quite often this isn’t accurate. Ensuring this information is clearly rendered would be good.

I would advocate trying to render sidewalks, particular along main roads in rural areas. It is useful to know about these when walking in the countryside and OS doesn’t do this.

Finding a “soft” way to map the random “natural” tree rows that appear along rivers, streams & railways lines would be good.

Tea shops would be very good and again aren't on an OS map.

Hopefully some of the above comments are of some use.

Kind Regards

Dudley

@dudleyibbett Thanks for your input - yes these are all good ideas. I'm wondering whether (as a long term thing) we should aim to actually offer different renderings in different styles? Or maps which look different at different zoom levels? Something Landranger-like at 14, Explorer like at 15 and 16 and "standard OSM" like at higher zoom levels (but with UK conventions for road colours, green for trunk etc) - and something resembling a standard road atlas at lower zoom levels?

Wondering whether to start specific threads for a) rendering and b) proposed features, so we can discuss each more fully.

Hi all,

At this stage I'd pick something relatively simple to deliver and concentrate on delivering that. That might be something as "simple" as a transparent PRoW layer that can be overlaid over an existing map style, or a new style of interactive map UI (as mentioned in another thread) or something else entirely, but trying to do "everything new" at the very start is a huge ask.

Dudley's mentioned map.atownsend.org.uk above - if you end up going the osm2pgsql/lua/carto/mapnik route then you may well be able to borrow from that map's lua and stylesheet parts. It's definitely worth taking more time than I did thinking about the lua side though - don't just let it "evolve".

I'd also suggest doing whatever's necessary to help people directly contribute - people definitely struggle with the likes of switch2osm and the ircama tutorials, but it's much more useful to be able to say "here is $idea implemented for one county, see what it looks like" than "here is $idea".

I'd also suggest using existing OSM help resources wherever possible (help.osm.org, IRC, the "tile serving" and "dev" lists etc.). Many of the people able to help with advice won't be from the UK and won't know about a discussion on here, but they may see a discussion elsewhere.

Best Regards,

Andy

Hi Nick,

There are an overwhelming number of options and I agree with Andy about keeping it simple and going for something deliverable - which can always be built upon.

Loomio has a recently added 'dot poll' option - so maybe it's worth putting all of the options that have been discussed onto one and seeing what gets voted for most and starting there?

Best,

Adam

Hi @nickwhitelegg

I'd echo the keep it simple philosophy. We are going to draft up some high level plans for the other projects. Perhaps you might want to do the same (even if just to help you keep track of things).

On the subject of servers, we are currently exploring some options here whilst waiting for the bank account to be opened (still awaiting bank response). It was pointed out that tools such as Jawg provide a free service with 50k views per month and 2 custom tile sets. This might help you get started on playing with some cartography styles....?

An update on this: if you're not aware we now have server space for developing the UK map website and there's now a GitHub organisation (osm-uk) and repo (osmuk), i.e URL = https://github.com/osm-uk/osmuk. Please let me know if you want read/write access to the repo.

Hi Nick,
Any reason why you appear to have created a new, empty https://github.com/osm-uk organisation? https://github.com/osmuk already exists and someone who I had assumed was you https://github.com/nickw1 is a member.
Regards,
Andy

Hello Andy, I'd forgotten about that one initially... also I don't have admin rights on the 'website' repository within it so can't invite other people.

I've now created a 'website_real' repository in 'osmuk'. Will use this from now on; someone with admin rights on 'osmuk' please feel free to delete 'website' and rename 'website_real' to website.

Adam, Robert, Jez, James - please note the real repository is now
https://github.com/osmuk/website_real

Now first commit added to repo. Not much there (just a map and a non-functional login form) but the project is now up and running!

The site is located at
http://47.91.91.133/dev-nick-osm

Hi Nick,

I'd like to join the github team: jnicho02

Regards,
Jez

Hello Jez, have just sent invitation to you and Robert.

Can I join the github project too? I'm rjw62 on github. Thanks!

Hello Jez and Robert, have just sent invitations to you both.

Quick update on this - sorry, there's been some delay getting the permissions I needed on the BiRT server hence no updates for the past couple of weeks. The bad news, for the moment, is that the server space given to us on the BiRT server will only be available until the end of the month, as they are moving to a new server; we should have this server available to us at some point but maybe a month or two after that. Good news though is for the moment I will have superuser access on this server (for the next 2 weeks or so) so can experiment with playing around with the stylesheet - once this is working then I can add a very basic Mapnik stylesheet to the git repository and/or the existing OSM stylesheet which people can then obviously contribute to and/or edit. Also Alan (sys admin of BiRT) is going to recommend some cheap hosting options which we could use for a longer-term solution to hosting the map server.

If absolutely necessary I can also use my Freemap server as an interim solution - if you need an account on that (and you're someone I know/trust) I can always give you access.

Further update. Got a mod_tile setup going on my own Freemap server using only Hampshire - which in many ways is a good county as it has a mix of urban, rural and coastline so a good place to develop any walkers'/PRoW map features. Until the new BiRT server comes online (or we get alternative hosting - Alan from BiRT is coming back to me on this) I'll be using this as the test environment. I will transfer the basic OSM-UK map page here shortly.. will let you know when this is done.

In terms of developing a rendering, any opinions on whether to start something from scratch or just adapt the default OSM style? At the moment I've got it going with v2.45.1 of the standard osm style (newer versions need mapnik 3 which isn't available by default on my distro.. though if necessary I can install it from source)

There would be advantages in terms of developer time and user familiarity if we just piggybacked on the default OSM style and added our own GB tweaks on top -- such as fixing the road colours, PRoW and stile rendering, welsh language support etc.

OK, now got the site running on the Freemap server, see http://www.free-map.org.uk/osmuk/. Due to server constraints only Hampshire and West Sussex are covered but this will be enough for a proof-of-concept. Login not working, but will shortly use oauth to authenticate with the main OSM server. Using v2.45.1 of OSM style, as I indicated yesterday - so will stick with this unless there are any objections. GitHub repo at https://github.com/osmuk/website_real, so if anyone wants to hack on the map stylesheets or contribute website code, we're good to go!

Was having a chat with Jerry yesterday and we came to the decision that it might be better to use Andy Townsend's map style as a basis for this as he's already done a good deal of work on the sort of issues we have to deal with and it will save a lot of effort having to re-invent the wheel, so to speak. Andy - I presume you're happy with this?

... this is now up on http://www.free-map.org.uk/osmuk. This is Andy's style, very slightly modified to show footpaths and bridleways in Landranger style. Hampshire only.

Just a quick note - if no further changes have been made other than "red bridleways" it might be worth re-fetching and reapplying those changes, as there have been a number of changes to the parent style as described at http://map.atownsend.org.uk/maps/map/changelog.html . I suspect that the historic stuff is most worth having (see e.g. Stonehenge http://map.atownsend.org.uk/maps/map/map.html#zoom=20&lat=51.1788263&lon=-1.826101 ) and in the light of the current Shell petrol stations work the changes to show operator and/or brand on those is worth having too.