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Comment by tarsinge | Hacker News Reader

A confusion that I had at first before going further into the Openstreetmap ecosystem: OSM is not a ready to use app and some alternative to Google Maps the app, it's a lower level database on which front-ends renderings with a tileset can be built to serve different usages. If you go to openstreetmap.org you will not see much, but click on "Edit" and zoom in close and you'll get a better idea of the data layer.

Edit: to further clarify the stack, Mapbox is a collection of tools for creating maps from OSM data.

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A really cool frontend for OSM is https://mapscii.me. You can try it out via:

    $ telnet mapscii.me

(Use arrow keys to move, and a/z to zoom in/zoom out)

I was totally blown away when I first connected to it.

In awe! You can also use the mouse to navigate around like on a gui map.

I only get this:

  $ telnet mapscii.me
  Trying 144.76.97.34...
  Connected to mapscii.me.
  Escape character is '^]'.
  _

Then nothing more happens. Arrow keys just get printed back out like with `cat`:

  ^[[A^[[D^[[B^[[C

Eventually I get "Connection closed by foreign host." This is on Arch Linux with telnet from inetutils. Am I holding something wrong?

That is rather wonderful but, of course, one typically can't use telnet at work "because security". I got left with it in a mode printing escapes afterwards, and needed reset(1), but I guess that's telnet's fault, unless TERM is wrong.

https://benmaps.fr/ is an example of using mapbox components (which in turn use OSM data) to create a Google Maps app.

That's a really sexy map.

I like the traffic switch.

Correct.

OSM has spawned many companies, Mapbox being the most well-known that offers general services.

As someone new to mapping and who wants to learn in a React or JS/web context, are there any articles,tutorials, books or videos you would suggest?

I think starting with Leaflet and building from that should give you a good understanding of the building blocks for web mapping: https://leafletjs.com/examples.html

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