OpenStreetMap
I found myself down a rabbit hole searching for a good tool for a specific use-case today. The use case is trying to send someone a link to a specific geographic area. My use-case was for directing another person to a specific meetup spot (“meet me over here by the northeast corner of the parking lot”), which doesn’t need to be a point but could be something like a 10x10 foot square and still get the point across. Additionally, there’s a use-case for it in leaving “map notes” within the OSM system: some notes need to indicate very precisely “there’s a missing feature RIGHT HERE”, but others could be more general (“this area is a forest”), and if the note could be tied to a zone, that could be more helpful.
I have used what3words in the past for this, and that site has a nice, short URI scheme to share with people, but the map layers don’t include OSM options, so I started looking for ways to combine the two. That lead me to the wiki page that highlighted many shortcomings with that system (as it’s a centralized, copywritten service). So I went hunting for other systems that could fill the same need of sending people a nice link to “meet me here” (small area) or “I live here” (building-sized area), with OSM tile data under it.
Of the many options for “geohash”-style approximations of latitude/longitude, it seems “Plus Codes” (formerly “Open Location Codes”, OLC) have gained traction as a way to refer to small and large geographic areas, but the main https://plus.codes/map site (the key one that allows seeing a visualization of the grid system, so you know how big a region you’re referring to) only uses Google Maps tiles as the underlying visual, so aesthetically is the same as what3words (telling someone “meet me at the corner of the parking lot here:” with https://plus.codes/86MG4JJJ+HHR is essentially the same experience as giving them https://w3w.co/handy.lame.treats).
Notably, the https://plus.codes/ map is better at showing less-precise plus-codes, as it actually draws the boundary to show you the level of precision (https://plus.codes/86MG4J00+ shows a red box around the zone, while entering “86MG4J00+” in the search box on Google Maps sets it to “86MG4JFF+XXX” (the center of the 86MG4J00+000 area), which is not the desired result.
So, anyone know of any other mapping sites that use OSM tiles, and support URL navigation to a Plus Code location (either precise or broad), and shows the boundaries of what you queried for?
Discussion
Comment from MxxCon on 26 August 2023 at 21:39
Why not share just the plus code on its own? That way the recipient can use their map of choice, be it a flavor of osm or goog, to see the referenced coordinates.
There was a service similar to linktree where you give it coordinates, it generates a short link and when you open it, it gives you like 10-15 different mapping services to open that location with. But its name escapes me and I just spent 15min searching and trying to remember its name.
Comment from MatthiasMatthias on 26 August 2023 at 22:46
I simply use the “share” button on osm.org. It gives you something like: osm.org/?mlat=48.84639&mlon=2.33315#map=19/48.84639/2.33315 which can also be shortened on the page into osm.org/go/0BOdwJ7x9?m= For more complex scenarios, you can use uMap: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/untitled-map_953620#20/48.85001/2.28015 Or you can simply share a “geo”-link, so that the recipient can use its application of preference: geo:40.68924,-74.04455?z=17
Comment from Midnightlightning on 8 September 2023 at 20:28
Yes, that’s a good point that sharing the plus code on its own is a way for the recipient to pick. It would be great if the “geo” schema handled plus codes (or plus codes had their own schema for click-ability!)
The “share” links from a specific map tool are good for just copy/paste links, though take up a lot of room in a paragraph, hence why I was looking for something more concise. Using just lat/lng points has the issue of implying an infinitely small point rather than an area, even with levels of precision (https://xkcd.com/2170/), which is why I was looking at other coordinate systems that gear toward areas than points.