I've been working on a map browser project, and I have some code I'm ready to think about releasing (free, with source, under the Eclipse Public Licence).
It's a Java/Eclipse based application which is capable of displaying various kinds of map data, including (of course) OSM data. I have tested it only on Windows, but it should run on all other Eclipse platforms including Mac OSX and Linux. There is a some information, including screen shots on my website at http://www.immutify.com/products/maptools/maptools.html and from there is a link to the entire online help content for the product. It can display the slippy maps, as well as rendering on the fly from the XML data returned by the OSM API. I also have code which allows it to display Google Maps, Google Satellite maps, and QCT format commercial maps, although I have removed these features for the time being because of legal concerns. It can interface to a GPS to provide a moving map display, but this is also removed for the moment because of licensing concerns with the RXTX library, which is under an LGPL license. It can call the OSM API to download the XML data for the viewable portion of a raster map and display the OSM data as an overlay, which seems fine. There are a few limitations/issues which are discussed in the on line help available via the URL above. My main issue is with the interactive map which renders on the fly from the XML API. It requests "tiles" of XML data, equivalent to Slippy map tiles at zoom level 12 (in terms of area covered). The calls to the API are rather slow, which suggests to me that the server is working hard to answer the queries, and I want to get some people who understand what's happening on the server to look at it before I release to a wider audience, hence this email. The program caches all data and never re-requests anything it has cached (not actually the right behaviour, but progress so far). When the XML data is cached the rendering is a bit slow, but workable, when the data has to be fetched it seems to be too slow however, but my main concern is the impact on the servers if a lot of people start using it. Note that this is a browser application and any calls to the tile servers or API are as a direct result of a user viewing a map interactively, this is not a systematic bulk download. For the tile servers I think the load is no more than for a user viewing the map via a web browser. I'm trying to write a client app, rather than implement server infrastructure, so I'd be happiest if I can just source the data I need online, but options to move this forward I can see include: OSM provides ready cut "tiles" of XML data, this seems like a sensible approach to me, but I might be alone. I've heard about something called TRAPI but haven't seen much information about it. I take the planet file and produce these tiles. I take the planet file and produce Eclipse plugins so users can download, say, a countries worth of data. This makes it more useful as an offline tool. I add functionality to the client to be able to process a planet file (or extract) and users can do this for themselves. So, if you would like to take a look, or would like to suggest suitable people to do so, please let me know and I'll send you the download details so you can try it. If you have suggestions about how to make it better, then so much the better. Regards, Bruce Skingle.
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