OK, since part 6 I have changed ship, which sort of solved the IT caos for my part (I managed to get approval for a full IT upgrade on the vessel I left), and came to a much better IT solution. Here I can access OSM with my own laptop, and even do some uploads. I focused on completing the building layer of the Planimetria import, and are now in the progress of uploading that. I will probably need one more day for that.

Well, the IT solution is better here, but the firewall are still too tight. There are a few features we would like to have liberated, such as e-mail and IM, but for the moment we can access our web-mail and use Meebo. I am not happy with the solution, but it is better than nothing.

I have started to ponder about next step in the import. There are plenty of layers to import, but another large layer such as the building layer must wait. I have the TXT_EDIFICACAO (building name), TXT_RUA (road name) and TXT_RODOVIA (highway name/ref) layers in mind when I talk about other large layers. Yes I know that it would have been good to import that together with the roads and the buildings. But mess in the splitting of the layers made that a cumbersome task, it is easier to get the data back from the server than to match the tiles of split layer data.

I am making notes of experience from every move here, and want a total rewrite of the splitting tools for the next import. I would also like to see a tool that can force "closed ways" on all objects in a file, something that would have made the building import a lot easier. i.e. if all ways with more than 3 nodes was wrapped to closed ways, than it would only be a matter of combining the areas (command shift J in JOSM@Mac). I have also installed a plugin that helps me create multipolygon relations with a mouse-click.

I have probably another few months to complete all the data worth importing. There are a few layers I will not bother about. Anyway, a full list of the layers are here including a list of the tags I suggest for each layer. I have used a template to link to the Brazilian Portuguese descriptions of the tags, sort of a carrot on what needs to be translated in the wiki. Apropos translations, I have done same "redlink" tactics on the Brazilian road sign page.

I haven't got around to ask for more data to import. I think I will ask for assistance from the Brazilian community, since my Portuguese still are a bit rusty and clumsy.

By the way, a new user (seeming to do some mapping in the region of Alegre and Muniz Freire) have found another source of data, we should probably enter in contact with them to verify licensing, the amount of data seems promising. My concern is that it might not be fully available to us as some of the underlying sources are from private firms (which are not covered by the law of free access of public data). Hope for a response we can work with, i.e. the same type of conditions as was given for the IBGE data.