On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 5:38 PM, Gavin Scott <[email protected]> wrote: > So I have uploaded some tracks using Potlach. I click edit then select edit > and then tick the box Convert GPX tracks to ways and when it opens I cannot > select the GPX track to turn it into a way. Is there a size limit - it has > 1500 nodes or points - is this the problem? > > Also does teh same functionality exist in josm - can I turn a gpx track into > a way without having to retrace it?
Yes, the gpxedit (or is it editgpx?) plugin in josm allows this. The josm plugin will also display a very helpful and serious warning about not converting gpx tracks into ways for openstreetmap. So please don't convert gps tracks to ways and upload them to OSM. They don't meet the standard of quality that we can accomplish with human editing. Here's why. Most gpx tracks are full of junk. Junk from bad reception. Junk from when we stop for coffee. Junk from a random reflection from a building. Junk from when we left our intended track because we were distracted by a pretty sunset. This junk should all be filtered out by the "wet ware" that is the considerate editor who collected that rack and is editing and adding data to OpenStreetMap. The drawbacks of gpx tracks are even greater when using a track collected by somebody else. Were they walking on the sidewalk, the traffic lane, or down the center of the carriageway? Was the track post-processed to add or remove anything? Was the track even collected by gps? Let's say the track doesn't suffer from any of these drawbacks, and that it is technically perfect. Convert it to a way and you'll end up with a way with far too many nodes. It is a rare sub-section of a trace that should have one node per second of gpx file. Uploading a way directly converted from a gpx track is in all likelihood a really poor bit of mapping. And a final, and serious problem with direct conversion of a gpx track to an OSM way. The conversion won't consider junctions with existing OSM ways and data. For all of these reasons, we use gpx track files as guidelines to assist us in our mapping, but not as a substitute for our judgment and experience. So while editors may allow gpx conversion, it is not recommended. So, again. Please don't. You might ask why such a task is possible when it is not recommended. (I might ask that as well) I don't know. ;-) But I am glad to have the gpx functions available in josm because I use that the edit my gpx files before contributing them to OSM. I remove the distracting extras at the beginning and end of the trace before converting back to gpx and upload to OSM. _______________________________________________ newbies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/newbies
