It's actually OK compared to your typical GIS desktop app, but naturally not the thing to recommend a beginner.
177 karma · joined October 20, 2015
Using JOSM for your 1st edit is definitely not recommended.
Doing the same with iD (the editor embedded in the OSM website) is faster and there's even a tutorial that will explain a bit about how things work.
The main purpose of the maps on the site is, besides showcasing some topical uses of OSM data, rapid feedback to contributors, which is something that required specific development so that can be provided with vector tiles too.
The 'late to the game' narrative seems to be a bit misplaced in any case given that OSM data has powered essentially all vector tile use outside of Google over more than a decade.
The whole point of OSM is that you can take the data and build / design your own things. Yes it would be nice if there were multiple viable google alternatives based on OSM and other open data, but that is likely just a pipe dream, the economics don't really work.
Paul has written a blog post or two on the subject https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/pnorman/diary
Doesn't seem to make sense when you can just run a nominatim or photon instance locally. Not to mention that currently you would typically have to add additional address data to the mix to get the quality of commercial geocoding services which makes the doing it via tiles even less attractive.
Not really. You need to build geometries from raw OSM data (aka the stuff that you edit) then transform those geometries into MVT format adding appropriate attributes from the original data. In general you actually will want to normalize the data and throw out anything that is not included in the vector tile schema you are using. The net result is quite far from raw OSM data in any case.
PS: I maintain a project that stores actual OSM data in MBTiles format for offline editing, and yes proper editing apps have to do the above on the fly and it is the main reason they are not lightning fast.
Tippecanoe takes geojson and splits it up into tiles, we are talking about doing that with OSM data here. Typically you will want to apply some normalisation of the input data, then you need instantiate the geometry of the OSM objects, then split things up according to the vector tile schema in use and then write the tiles.
It is difficult to beat raster tiles in that respect. vector tiles split up responsibility for what you get visually over multiple moving pieces with different provenance and operators.
Further point: the data available in the vector tiles is defined by the vector tile schema and by far doesn't contain "everything".
One of the downsides of MVTs and the typical max zoom level of 14 is that that they do require more local resources than simply rendering a 256x256 bitmap.
For OSM the question is naturally would a complete migration (aka turning off raster tile support) exclude any noticeable number of people from contributing.
But right now that decision is still a long way off, the vector tile service hasn't even been integrated in osm.org yet.
MVT format vector tiles are not remotely suitable for navigation or search (not ruling out that something could be hobbled together, but it would be a bit of a stretch).
Static or infrequently updated vector tiles can be generated from OSM data by a number of tools, but those most popular right now are https://github.com/systemed/tilemaker and https://github.com/onthegomap/planetiler
The actual -new- thing is that the work Paul has done for the OSMF allows on the fly (aka in minutes) updates of the vector tiles. This is important for OSM contributors as a feedback mechanism and the main reason the OSMF operates the current raster tile service.
What is currently a bit out in the open is which usage restrictions will apply to to using the vector tile service as, just as with the raster tile service, the intent is not to compete with or replace third party services and a vector tile service could potentially do that.
Except that the numbers show the opposite.
While direct entry (on the phone) is what I would do and would recommend for anybody that already knows the ropes, it is going to be overwhelming for a beginner.
PS: I was commenting on the whole thread, and if you look through it you will see Steve mentioned as the OSM savant.
Since then a lot of things have changed and the global imagery layers (currently Bing, ESRI and mapbox, all three using Maxar for a significant part) are, in developed parts of the world, mainly just used as a lesser quality fallback. As an example where I'm making right now, I'm using state level, a federal and a global (non-Bing) imagery.
Steve hasn't been a relevant force in OSM for more than a decade and if you want to do OSM a favour, point people to the editor on openstreetmap.org, not any of the mobile or "simplified" editing apps.
So, yes, you are going to need to make a trade off between potentially more incidents, but faster repair, and less incidents, but being stuck with your current validated release for a while if something goes wrong.
PS: it is OpenStreetMap, no plural "s"
PPS: Meta produces a publicly available validated version of OSM data.
What is currently on the table is simply a way to cleanly differentiate between closed ways that are polygons and actual closed ways. Example roundabout enclosing a park. The problem is that right now this relies on determining this from the tagging. This could well be implemented as a flag on the existing way type and not as an actual new datatype.
There is at this stage no intention to revamp the way how we model areas that are more complex than the single polygons from above, that is with multi-polygon relations.
The more controversial topic is giving OSM way objects partially or fully their own geometry.
The former would have for all practical purposes no noticeable contributor effect outside of geometry changes always creating new versions of ways, contrary to the current behaviour which can be somewhat puzzling for newbies.
The later would be quite drastic, but would provide more benefits for at least some kinds of processing, for others not, as then topology would have to be inferred.
In any case the 90% of the discussion on this topic fretting about tagging is completely misplaced as literally nobody is even remotely considering changing that.
As a rule you will not be contacted by the relevant trademark registering office. What happens is that the registration filing is published, and if you are opposed to it going through you will need to file opposition within a certain period after the publication.
That's why organisations with IP to protect typically directly or indirectly (that is via counsel) use trademark watching services. Essentially these scan the where ever the filings are published, and will send you alerts or whatever when something turns up on the radar.
Actually filing opposition is rather tedious and expensive, and particularly when different good/service classes are being used, sometimes difficult to actually be successful with.
Contrary to doing the right thing in such a situation as Ben is doing with OpenMapChest, the operator of garmin.openstreetmap.nl went incommunicado years back, but refused to hand over it to anybody else or at least shut it down. Given that it is nearly always broken, not a good state of things.