OpenStreetMap
(I thought it would be better to blog in english)
I'v been out on my bike yesterday to do some mapping north of Kleinostheim. First, everything went well and some tracks and "Towers of Power" have been mapped. Suddenly I realised that my laptop wasn't logging any longer so I went back the same way I came. It was a little frustrating but traces were good after all.
This time I really tried to use Merkaator (SVN head) to do the mapping stuff and I admit that I get along with it quite well. Once you really use the keyboard shortcuts mapping is done pretty fast. Just two things that I don't get yet: Why do nodes look just the same as trackpoints? (And why can I select trackpoints?) How do I delete tags of an object? Adding or modifying them is no problem at all, trying to delete a tag from a node was just not possible. Added a short note on the wiki: osm.wiki/Merkaartor_doc_0.12#Editing_tags_of_an_object
Later that day I added about 20 amenities and shops in Kleinostheim using Merkaartor. I was so annoyed that it didn't display icons for them that I switched to JOSM just to check. Not seeing an icon on a node in JOSM is not a problem at all because you can tell a node without tags, one with and trackpoints by the way they look. In Merkaartor they all just look the same.
At about 23:30 I wanted to go out again to draw a current WiFi-map using kismet and I ended up micro-mapping some stuff around my house. Few days earlier I read that GPSrs have best reception between 00:00 and 04:00 due to the amount of electrons in the ionosphere. I checked my GPS-software and it used 12!! sats for navigation. The sky was totally clear and it was cold but it was fun to map when you know the reception is so good. The Wifi-map was drawn nevertheless.
Today I noticed on OSM Inspector that we had a few broken ways around Aschaffenburg so I fired up JOSM to fix them. I'm really glad there is that "error checking" feature of JOSM. Furthermore I fixed some duplicated nodes and some areas that were absolute mess.
Discussion
Comment from ColinMarquardt on 6 January 2009 at 17:52
The red X should work for deleting tags - you have to have your input focus set to the tag you want to delete. There is also a patch now that makes trackpoints unclickable (hopefully integrated into SVN soon). As for the icons, do you know that you can switch the map style? Try MapnikPlus for instance, it has more icons than the Classic style. MapnikPlus will also show a different icon for a node with tags even if it doesn't have a specific icon defined (I thought the Classic style did that too though...).
Comment from Jannis on 10 January 2009 at 20:12
Thanks ColinMarquardt for the hints. I didn't see the "small" red X there because Merkaartor was overlapped by another window but it works ;)
I did know about the mapstyle but MapnikPlus is so slow one can't really work with (at least on my laptop and my desktop). It's true that it displays an "i"-icon. I realised when I was working on trunks some days later on another computer who had the MapnikPlus style.
It looks I'm getting along with Merkaartor better now. Thanks again for the hints.