That habit of Potlatch of deleting ways without telling you, or causing split ways to generate overlapping ways gets tiring fast, and is a pain in the ass to locate and fix. I'm wondering if this is not the lost-connection-not-saving-changes thing, but since there is no way to actually know whether the "retry" option actually worked, it's impossible to tell...

In any case, it didn't prevent me from setting up another bus route. It was a mess at the entrance on Laurier from Laval campus because not only was the RTC map slightly incorrect (AFAICT), but somebody had set up the one-way exits in the wrong direction, which confused for a while.

Now I just need to figure how to make a relation between relations in Potlatch.

here

Finally got around to do a bus route. Why one in Quebec City? Easy: because the Montreal transport authority has no mapping at all on its website. Also, I ran that route for years over a longer distance than I do the routes here in MTL.

However, the current setup for bus routes is thoroughly inadequate. As currently defined, it is not even capable of handling a simpel case of opposite direction stops on different ways of a double-carriageway. Don't even get me started on loops with different number of stops in each directions!

ETA: ANybody knows how to make relations between relations??

I see today's spam is finally gone, except for this account.

Admittedly, the system does lends itself to messing up. I just spent some time figuring out a mess of overlapping ways, missing connections and misplaced signals.

And there the bit that worried me was that placing the intersection marker on a layer above the bridges would cause problems...

As an aside, how do you people tag prisons? That small service way going to the intersection is a prison entrance, but it doesn't show on the map. I'm not clear whether to use a combination of area and amenity tags. Should I go through the trouble of drawing the buildings? Or should I use a point to show on the map? I'm loathe to having both an area and a point to mark something (which is why I keep fixing that in parkings other small things like that). Of course, it's possible that, quite simply, amenity=prison is not currently shown on any renderers to begin with...

FWIW I've typically dealt with the simpler cases of separated roads crossing each others or single-carriage road by making all ways cross each others in a single point, which is marked with a highway=traffic_signal tag. To me, anything else is at best misleading, at worst downright incorrect.

ETA: Apparently, some other people seem to agree with my take.

So, I added a whole bunch of house numbers while going to check the name of a park. Turns out the "park" (basically a grassy zone) was next to a community garden, as I has suspected (though I'm still trying to figure what the "BP" stands for...). Haven't added much else because it's quiet residential streets, so there are no phones, post boxes or whatever. Will probably need to go back and double-check for the way the alleys are laid.

On a totally different topic, who should eb alerted when it comes to this silliness? The system purging accounts probably could use a revision because if deleting an account does NOT actually removes the offending links, there is no incentive for spammers to stop. Wouldn't a cap on number of links be simpler to implement?

ETA: Now that's an improvement ^__^

It's really amazing all the little things you notice when you do mapping. Most maps I've seen (including my first try) give Bellerive St. going all the way up to connect with George-V Av. However, that street in fact stops at Gonthier Av., oner corner short, and it's connected to George-V via a short service street spur.

Mapped quite a few more street numbers. Note to self: Come back to check the civic number for point 303620231. "352" is impossible on that side of the street >_<.

Except for one street, which might have been planned for, but never actually built. Will need to check myself next time I visit, or ask my sis to.

Also threw in the nearby Power station. At some point I swear I'll bother to do the Champ d'Hydro power line area

Tweaked some stuff (mostly adding streets to the addresses I had in) near home, and added a small bunch of stuff near Édouard-Montpetit Metro station. not sure if tomorrow will be spent mapping close to home (adding alleys and small stuff) or checking for various missing street in that area I added a few, but compare with this map, especially the area between the park and Côte-Sainte-Catherine road...

I swear I gotta figure the way I want to do the bus routes at some point. I mean, the way I've been doing it so far just doesn't quite cut it IMHO.

Added a pharmacy down the street from my home (how come I didn't remember sooner??). Also a bunch of former names in my hometown area of Saint-Émile. The city has a very useful list database listing current and former street names (though it never says which segments were renamed, which makes it impossible for me to clear where exactly was the Rue du Parc). At some point I swear I'll take the time to map as much of it as I can Unfortunately, a significant chunk of the new developments north of De la Faune I can't map from Y!Maps imagery (thought they do show up on the satellite portion of G!maps, even though quite a few street names are missing).

So I tried out some house numbering near my home. I'm not keeping it. Not that it's ugly. It's that the patch was clearly not planned to handle more than three digits. In my area, 4+ digits civic numbers are the rule, not the exception (think about it: if a city has numbers in the 10,000, that means there are at least nine house numbers with 4+ digits for every one that has three or less...). Unfortunately, 4-digit numbers are barely. I'm not even going to test five digits.

In the light of my last post, I was wondering if you could search for a way or node with specific characteristics? I know tagwatch can give you tag usage statistics, but it cannot link you to any specific feature...

Anybody tried to compile a list of what Mapnik and Osmarender do render and how differently they do it?

One annoying difference that springs to mind is that Mapnik cannot render icons for amenities that are building/areas, but in Osmarender, the dot necessary for the Mapnik render causes a second icon to pop-up (I tend to delete the dot, assuming that Mapnik is supposed to eventually display it, and it's ultimately redundant either way). Another thing is that amenity=hospital on an area display the area, but no icon in Mapnik (which, AFAICT, does not display icons for most areas period), but nothing in Osmarender (which bring the point of whether to apply the name on area, building, or node for hospital...). Also, Osmarender displays name for hospitals, but not Mapnik etc. See the coordinate for an example.

I just spent a while cleaning up the mess of "dead" (some were actually approved!) proposals on the wiki. I was surprised at just how many of them there were (also nuked a number of empty proposals never actually filled in). Maybe I'll go in and suggest a water_splash feature for wading pools and similar water games I mentioned in an earlier diary.

Now I'm going to go double check some bus stop locations and start considering the best way to map bus stops to route.

Well, turns out I created myself a textbook example of the situation I described in my previous diary. I cannot fix the typo in Potlatch with the name of a street I created because the nearby park overlaps it.

(The area is traced in Osmarender but not Mapnik)

So, I improved the mapping of the UdM campus (or so I dare to think). Mostly this involved adding/fixing building outlines and adding a few surrounding features as well as pedestrian paths/tunnels. Also adjusted the position of Côte-des-Neiges station, which was position too much to the north. I'm worried about the reduced accessibility caused by the combination of several areas being attached to a single way. If the entire length of a way later becomes part of the edge of something, can the way sill be edited? What it there are several embedded areas involved?

In related concerns, neither renderer seems to be able to deal with the possibility of some features bordering each others, such as cemeteries. Is it a current bug or a feature that some areas are drawn without bordering edges?

On the other end, I found out about the "data" layer, which is awesome to get a rough idea of what you've done.

I've got a nice puzzler for you: How do you do water works like wading pools (there's one in a park near my home) and splash/bathing fountains? I know swimming pools are theoretically covered separately (with the sports tag), but I'm thinking they should be split back to include such things and cordoned swimming areas in lake/beaches etc.

Any thoughts?

So, I started by mapping a few features around my home. Immediately ran into a few problems (I've read on the Wiki you should attach areas to surrounding ways, but I can,t see how to actually do it, and am unsure how best to join road without causing alignment problems), but am hoping to learn to deal with them.

(Edit: I think I've figured out how to get these to work right in Potlatch.)