Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-30 Thread Brad Neuhauser
I think this appears to be the reference Richard mentioned:
http://www.iho-ohi.net/iho_pubs/standard/S-23/S23_1953.pdf

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 6:51 AM, Richard Z.  wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 08:41:18AM +0100, Marc Gemis wrote:
> > Could we try an example to see whether mappers agree on bay areas ? could
> > you draw the Gulf of Biscay on a map ?
> >
> > This guy did it :
> >
> http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_-9_Y031ZiZQ/THowBMn81dI/Ci8/inSvDDa1DC4/s1600/Golf+van+Biskaje.jpg
> >
> > I might have extended it a bit further to the west on the Spanish
> coast...
>
> note that the big bodies of water such as the bay of biscay have been
> "defined"
> by the international hydropgraphic organization, wikipedia provides the
> link.
>
> Those definitions should be probably mapped, but most likely with a
> special tag
> rather than our natural=bay because their definition of gulf of mexico is
> obviously
> not compatible with our definition of bay (refering to the sentence
> fragment "in Cuba,
> through this island to the meridian of 83°W" which includes a landmas to
> the
> definition)
>
> Richard
>
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-30 Thread Ilpo Järvinen
On Thu, 30 Oct 2014, Marc Gemis wrote:

> Could we try an example to see whether mappers agree on bay areas ? could
> you draw the Gulf of Biscay on a map ?
> This guy did it: 
> http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_-9_Y031ZiZQ/THowBMn81dI/Ci8/inSvDDa1DC4
> /s1600/Golf+van+Biskaje.jpg 
> I might have extended it a bit further to the west on the Spanish coast...

Would it be possible that locals around that region of the coastline would 
know it better than tagging@ ? ...If so, then the usual argument for OSM 
taking advantage of mappers' local knowledge applies also here and we 
should defer determining that boundary point more accurately to a local 
mapper.


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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-30 Thread Michael Kugelmann

On 30.10.2014 12:51, Richard Z. wrote:

their definition of gulf of mexico is obviously
not compatible with our definition of bay
IMHO: this has some similarities to definition of regions like "the 
Alps" or "the Rocky Mountains"...



Cheers,
Michael.


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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-30 Thread Richard Z.
On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 08:41:18AM +0100, Marc Gemis wrote:
> Could we try an example to see whether mappers agree on bay areas ? could
> you draw the Gulf of Biscay on a map ?
> 
> This guy did it :
> http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_-9_Y031ZiZQ/THowBMn81dI/Ci8/inSvDDa1DC4/s1600/Golf+van+Biskaje.jpg
> 
> I might have extended it a bit further to the west on the Spanish coast...

note that the big bodies of water such as the bay of biscay have been "defined"
by the international hydropgraphic organization, wikipedia provides the link.

Those definitions should be probably mapped, but most likely with a special tag 
rather than our natural=bay because their definition of gulf of mexico is 
obviously 
not compatible with our definition of bay (refering to the sentence fragment 
"in Cuba, 
through this island to the meridian of 83°W" which includes a landmas to the
definition)

Richard

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-30 Thread Bryce Nesbitt
A lot of the bay points were imported.
Many bays do not have firm boundaries.

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-30 Thread Marc Gemis
Could we try an example to see whether mappers agree on bay areas ? could
you draw the Gulf of Biscay on a map ?

This guy did it :
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_-9_Y031ZiZQ/THowBMn81dI/Ci8/inSvDDa1DC4/s1600/Golf+van+Biskaje.jpg

I might have extended it a bit further to the west on the Spanish coast...

regards

m

On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 6:12 PM, moltonel 3x Combo 
wrote:

> On 29/10/2014, Richard Z.  wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 05:21:06PM +0100, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
> >> On 28/10/2014, Richard Z.  wrote:
> > well even if the issues were nonexistent, mapping the area of a bay seems
> > to me like mapping an artificially introduced concept for which there is
> > very little real world use or recognition otherwise.
>
> Huh ? Forget about maps and osm for a moment. A bay is "a body of
> water mostly surrounded by land". You're "in" a bay, not "at" a bay.
> It has a size, it's not a point in space with a buoy marking the spot.
> It's an area.
>
> The fact that a lot of sources have simplified it down to a point is
> an entirely different issue. But there's no reason that, with modern
> tools and manpower, we can't make a better job than those historical
> sources. And remember that when you see a rendered bay label, you
> don't actually know wether the source (wether it's some vector data or
> an idea in the sailor's brain) was an area or a point to begin with.
>
> > Also bays with very
> > flat or deep geometry will result in disproportionately small areas so
> > mappers may feel compelled to do some ugly workarounds if the name of the
> > bay isn't shown as expected.
>
> Disproportionate compared to what ? And fairly flat coastlines are a
> good example of cases that are tricky for algorythms, where the human
> mapper can probably make a better decision.
>
> > So I would say
> > * if there is some other reason valid to map the bay as area, do it
>
> pros:
>  - bays are areas in real life
>  - it makes geocoding trivial
>  - it makes knowing which bays to render preferably easy (bigger bays
> first)
>  - it enables representing nested bays
>  - it is deterministic, as opposed to relying on a heuristic algorythm
> cons:
>  - relations are harder to work with than nodes
>  - the extent of bays is usually fuzzy; nodes make that fuzzyness obvious
>  - most of the existing data (osm and potential imports) are nodes
>
> YMMV, those are reasons enough for me.
>
> > * something better needs to be invented for hinting the renderer.
>
> It's not just the renderer, I actually think that the geocoding
> usacase is more important. And geocoding requires an area, wether it
> is provided in readily-usable form as osm data, or by a
> heuristics-based algorythm that infers it from a node.
>
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-29 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 29/10/2014, Richard Z.  wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 05:21:06PM +0100, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
>> On 28/10/2014, Richard Z.  wrote:
> well even if the issues were nonexistent, mapping the area of a bay seems
> to me like mapping an artificially introduced concept for which there is
> very little real world use or recognition otherwise.

Huh ? Forget about maps and osm for a moment. A bay is "a body of
water mostly surrounded by land". You're "in" a bay, not "at" a bay.
It has a size, it's not a point in space with a buoy marking the spot.
It's an area.

The fact that a lot of sources have simplified it down to a point is
an entirely different issue. But there's no reason that, with modern
tools and manpower, we can't make a better job than those historical
sources. And remember that when you see a rendered bay label, you
don't actually know wether the source (wether it's some vector data or
an idea in the sailor's brain) was an area or a point to begin with.

> Also bays with very
> flat or deep geometry will result in disproportionately small areas so
> mappers may feel compelled to do some ugly workarounds if the name of the
> bay isn't shown as expected.

Disproportionate compared to what ? And fairly flat coastlines are a
good example of cases that are tricky for algorythms, where the human
mapper can probably make a better decision.

> So I would say
> * if there is some other reason valid to map the bay as area, do it

pros:
 - bays are areas in real life
 - it makes geocoding trivial
 - it makes knowing which bays to render preferably easy (bigger bays first)
 - it enables representing nested bays
 - it is deterministic, as opposed to relying on a heuristic algorythm
cons:
 - relations are harder to work with than nodes
 - the extent of bays is usually fuzzy; nodes make that fuzzyness obvious
 - most of the existing data (osm and potential imports) are nodes

YMMV, those are reasons enough for me.

> * something better needs to be invented for hinting the renderer.

It's not just the renderer, I actually think that the geocoding
usacase is more important. And geocoding requires an area, wether it
is provided in readily-usable form as osm data, or by a
heuristics-based algorythm that infers it from a node.

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-29 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 28/10/2014, Christoph Hormann  wrote:
> On Tuesday 28 October 2014, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
>> I admit I don't fully understand how your algorythm works. I can't
>> imagine how you reduce everything to nodes and still retain
>> information about orientation and curves. Can you change your
>> rendering to display the infered polygons instead of the name ?
>
> I do not infer any areas, i just generate curves (splines) based on the
> nodes and the surrounding coastlines and place the text along them.

Hum, so that's only usable for label rendering, not geocoding :/

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-29 Thread Janko Mihelić
2014-10-29 14:46 GMT+01:00 Martin Koppenhoefer :

>
> 2014-10-29 14:40 GMT+01:00 Richard Z. :
>
>> Also bays with very
>> flat or deep geometry will result in disproportionately small areas so
>> mappers may feel compelled to do some ugly workarounds if the name of the
>> bay isn't shown as expected.
>>
>
> disproportionate to what? water depth really doesn't matter at all in this
> context (IMHO)
>
>
I think he was talking about bay shapes:

http://i.imgur.com/AMigrSf.png


What if we mapped bays on coastlines, and then the renderer can connect the
ending points with a straight line or a curve. And we can combine that with
a node which can be something like place=country (a rendering hint).

Janko
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-29 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer
2014-10-29 14:40 GMT+01:00 Richard Z. :

> Also bays with very
> flat or deep geometry will result in disproportionately small areas so
> mappers may feel compelled to do some ugly workarounds if the name of the
> bay isn't shown as expected.
>



disproportionate to what? water depth really doesn't matter at all in this
context (IMHO)

cheers,
Martin
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-29 Thread Richard Z.
On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 05:21:06PM +0100, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
> On 28/10/2014, Richard Z.  wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 11:18:43AM +0100, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:
> >> 2014-10-28 10:57 GMT+01:00 Richard Z. :
> >>
> >> The assumption is that a large bay will typically be more important than a
> >> smaller bay. For a good rendering you'd show only the more important bay
> >> names in medium zoom level and show the less important ones in higher zoom
> >> levels. You would use the size to decide which name to omit in case you'd
> >> not have space to render all of them.
> >
> > so to decide which label should be bigger or rendered at lower zoom level
> > you would suggest to:
> > * map bays as areas, with all previously mentioned issues
> 
> The issues are real, but we disagree on how big they are. I'm of the
> opinion that they aren't worth fussing over, but YMMV.
> 

well even if the issues were nonexistent, mapping the area of a bay seems 
to me like mapping an artificially introduced concept for which there is 
very little real world use or recognition otherwise. Also bays with very 
flat or deep geometry will result in disproportionately small areas so
mappers may feel compelled to do some ugly workarounds if the name of the
bay isn't shown as expected.

So I would say
* if there is some other reason valid to map the bay as area, do it
* something better needs to be invented for hinting the renderer.

Richard




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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-28 Thread Michael Kugelmann

On 26.10.2014 17:12, Mateusz Konieczny wrote:

Please, try mapping bays as areas - not as nodes.
but if you - for whatever reason ever - can't map it as area then it's 
better to map it as node instead not mapping it at all...


Just an example: I did it some times ago with "something" (can't 
remember what ist was, at least not a bay but maybe an amenity). And 
IIRC it was simply due to missing time at this edit. To be honest: I 
returned to work on this region some weeks later and changed the node to 
an area. So of course an area is usually better than a node.



Just my 2 cents,
Michael.


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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-28 Thread Christoph Hormann
On Tuesday 28 October 2014, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
>
> That's actually a very nice rendering. The channels in particular
> seem to be oriented very naturally. But when I look at the underlying
> osm data (nodes), it is much less clear how those features are
> oriented. I feel like the rendering tricked me into thinking "that's
> it, the channel is laid out this way" when the actual data says
> nothing of the sort.

For a channel between two islands with simple convex shape the situation 
is actually much clearer than for a bay - it is a one-dimensional 
feature, it has a width but no length so mapping it as an area is 
plainly wrong.  In more complicated situations the established method 
is to use a way connecting a few key points - up to extreme cases like 
here:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/163242449

> I admit I don't fully understand how your algorythm works. I can't
> imagine how you reduce everything to nodes and still retain
> information about orientation and curves. Can you change your
> rendering to display the infered polygons instead of the name ?

I do not infer any areas, i just generate curves (splines) based on the 
nodes and the surrounding coastlines and place the text along them.  
The main problem is that spatial database systems are not well suited 
for this kind of work (i.e. tasks like 'find the closest coastline in a 
certain direction').

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-28 Thread Christoph Hormann
On Tuesday 28 October 2014, Ilpo Järvinen wrote:
>
> But are all bays 'mostly surrounded by land' or do some bays also
> have very wide entrypoints (in addition to two pockets to trigger
> this peninsula case)? And yes, I know it can always be solved by
> drawing area manually if the algorithm won't get it right.

The wiki defines bays as "Area of water mostly surrounded by land".  
There are quite a few cases tagged this way with only a slight dent in 
an otherwise flat coastline where - if you'd map them as an area - less 
than half of the area outline would be formed by coastline.

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-28 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 28/10/2014, Richard Z.  wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 11:18:43AM +0100, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:
>> 2014-10-28 10:57 GMT+01:00 Richard Z. :
>>
>> The assumption is that a large bay will typically be more important than a
>> smaller bay. For a good rendering you'd show only the more important bay
>> names in medium zoom level and show the less important ones in higher zoom
>> levels. You would use the size to decide which name to omit in case you'd
>> not have space to render all of them.
>
> so to decide which label should be bigger or rendered at lower zoom level
> you would suggest to:
> * map bays as areas, with all previously mentioned issues

The issues are real, but we disagree on how big they are. I'm of the
opinion that they aren't worth fussing over, but YMMV.

> * design a sophisticated computer algorithm to calculate the size of bays
>   and derive bay importance from this

Finding the size of an area is actually much simpler than your
proposed algorythm. It's implemented in stock PostGIS. It doesn't
involve tuning or heuristics. It's aready used in many places in the
default osm rendering (osm-carto). It is done at import time and is
"free" from the map designer's POV.

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-28 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 27/10/2014, Christoph Hormann  wrote:
> Since for label rendering you don't really need a polygon there is
> little point in actually generating it in the first place.  But i have
> implemented and used techniques not unlike the algorithm described for
> rendering bay and strait labels, like in
>
> http://maps.imagico.de/#map=3/80.707/55.862&lang=en&l=dark&r=fj&ui=0

That's actually a very nice rendering. The channels in particular seem
to be oriented very naturally. But when I look at the underlying osm
data (nodes), it is much less clear how those features are oriented. I
feel like the rendering tricked me into thinking "that's it, the
channel is laid out this way" when the actual data says nothing of the
sort.

To render a pretty picture, I'd certainly use something like that. To
implement geofencing, area calculations, etc, I'd much rather trust a
human-estimated area.

> The funny thing is the first thing i do for this is reduce all features
> mapped as polygons to a node since the polygon is useless, its outer
> limit is arbitrary and the sides defined by the coastline do not match
> the generalized coastline used to render the map.

I admit I don't fully understand how your algorythm works. I can't
imagine how you reduce everything to nodes and still retain
information about orientation and curves. Can you change your
rendering to display the infered polygons instead of the name ?

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-28 Thread Ilpo Järvinen
On Tue, 28 Oct 2014, Christoph Hormann wrote:

> On Tuesday 28 October 2014, Janko Mihelić wrote:
> > > If you want to formulate a formal mathematical rule for where the
> > > node for a bay is best placed: Place it so the variance of the
> > > distance of the node to the bay's shores is minimized.  Most
> > > existing nodes comply with this rule remarkably well.
> >
> > What's the best place for the node in Guantanamo Bay? Is the current
> > node well placed?
> 
> I'd say it is.
> 
> Note the algorithm i sketched in its simple form would seriously 
> underestimate the bay size due to the peninsula in the middle - same 
> problem as small islands in the bay which i already mentioned.  It is 
> fairly easy though to detect and fix this (by making use of the fact 
> that a bay is 'mostly surrounded by land').

I see. This underestimation in the peninsula case was why I though you'd 
want the nodes at the entry point and thus my earlier comment about 
natural=bay_entry.

But are all bays 'mostly surrounded by land' or do some bays also have 
very wide entrypoints (in addition to two pockets to trigger this 
peninsula case)? And yes, I know it can always be solved by drawing area 
manually if the algorithm won't get it right.

Btw, instead of huge and fragile areas we could just create a relation 
which holds the coastline nodes of the bay extreme end points. Although 
also that would probably be just as fuzzy as the outer edge would be 
(i.e., where the bay really would end along the coastline).


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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-28 Thread Richard Z.
On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 11:18:43AM +0100, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:
> 2014-10-28 10:57 GMT+01:00 Richard Z. :
> 
> > Also, I am reading the arguments about estimating bay area so I am curious
> > - when was the last time someone asked about bay area in square kilometers?
> > I think it makes only sense in the context of territorial waters, fishing
> > or
> > mining rights etc.
> >
> 
> 
> The assumption is that a large bay will typically be more important than a
> smaller bay. For a good rendering you'd show only the more important bay
> names in medium zoom level and show the less important ones in higher zoom
> levels. You would use the size to decide which name to omit in case you'd
> not have space to render all of them.

so to decide which label should be bigger or rendered at lower zoom level
you would suggest to:
* map bays as areas, with all previously mentioned issues
* design a sophisticated computer algorithm to calculate the size of bays
  and derive bay importance from this

Wow.. masterpiece of mapping for the renderer I would say.

There must be easier ways of achieving this.

Richard

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-28 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer
2014-10-28 10:57 GMT+01:00 Richard Z. :

> Also, I am reading the arguments about estimating bay area so I am curious
> - when was the last time someone asked about bay area in square kilometers?
> I think it makes only sense in the context of territorial waters, fishing
> or
> mining rights etc.
>


The assumption is that a large bay will typically be more important than a
smaller bay. For a good rendering you'd show only the more important bay
names in medium zoom level and show the less important ones in higher zoom
levels. You would use the size to decide which name to omit in case you'd
not have space to render all of them.

Territorial waters are at most loosely connected to bays, because you don't
use the coastline to determine them, you use the baseline.

Cheers,
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-28 Thread Richard Z.
On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 04:28:53PM -0400, Eric Kidd wrote:

> But the key point here is that none of these official sources represent
> bays as polygons. GNIS uses a pointssomewhere in the bay. The nautical
> charts print the name somewhere in the middle of the bay. Effectively, the
> official data really is a point, plus whatever guesswork a human reader
> supplies.

+1

Also, I am reading the arguments about estimating bay area so I am curious
- when was the last time someone asked about bay area in square kilometers? 
I think it makes only sense in the context of territorial waters, fishing or 
mining rights etc. In such cases there will be an officially supplied boundary 
that can be used but will not necessarily agree with traditional extent of the 
bay.

Richard

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-28 Thread Christoph Hormann
On Tuesday 28 October 2014, Janko Mihelić wrote:
> > If you want to formulate a formal mathematical rule for where the
> > node for a bay is best placed: Place it so the variance of the
> > distance of the node to the bay's shores is minimized.  Most
> > existing nodes comply with this rule remarkably well.
>
> What's the best place for the node in Guantanamo Bay? Is the current
> node well placed?

I'd say it is.

Note the algorithm i sketched in its simple form would seriously 
underestimate the bay size due to the peninsula in the middle - same 
problem as small islands in the bay which i already mentioned.  It is 
fairly easy though to detect and fix this (by making use of the fact 
that a bay is 'mostly surrounded by land').

On a general note the established tagging conventions are of course not 
well suited for tropical coastal landforms dominated by mangrove.  
Technically you might also consider the inner bay a lagoon rather than 
a bay.

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Janko Mihelić
Dana 27. 10. 2014. 21:30 osoba "Eric Kidd" 
napisala je:
>

> The rendering onopenstreetmap.orgis pretty good: it just prints the bay
name at the marked point, and shows it across a reasonable range of scales.
There are some weird cases with nested bays, but those are weird on the
nautical charts, too.

Why would we adopt mapping styles from nautical charts if they have weird
renderings with some bays? We have to be better then those charts, even
though they are "official".

Dana 27. 10. 2014. 21:42 osoba "Christoph Hormann" 
napisala je:
>
>
> If you want to formulate a formal mathematical rule for where the node
> for a bay is best placed: Place it so the variance of the distance of
> the node to the bay's shores is minimized.  Most existing nodes comply
> with this rule remarkably well.

What's the best place for the node in Guantanamo Bay? Is the current node
well placed?

http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2501579651

Janko
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Christoph Hormann
On Monday 27 October 2014, Ilpo Järvinen wrote:
>
> IMHO, the most controversial thing in this all is that the approach
> Christoph is proposing would require us to not map natural=bay but
> "natural=bay_entry" instead, and that is obviously exactly where the
> fuzzy part is. That is, a mapper would be forced to place bay nodes
> into the place where nobody can say for sure if it's in the bay or
> not.

Then you have misunderstood me - i am not suggesting any change to the 
current mapping practice (including the option to map as a polygon when 
deemed appropriate by the mapper).

If you want to formulate a formal mathematical rule for where the node 
for a bay is best placed: Place it so the variance of the distance of 
the node to the bay's shores is minimized.  Most existing nodes comply 
with this rule remarkably well.

-- 
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Eric Kidd
When working near the coast of Maine in the US, I  see lots of bays. In
most cases, the ultimate source data for the bay names seems to be various
government maps and databases: GNIS, ancient nautical charts, or whatever.
There's a high degree of agreement between sources: If an island has 4
unnamed coves and 1 named cove in GNIS, then I'll usually find the exact
same data on the nautical charts.

But the key point here is that none of these official sources represent
bays as polygons. GNIS uses a pointssomewhere in the bay. The nautical
charts print the name somewhere in the middle of the bay. Effectively, the
official data really is a point, plus whatever guesswork a human reader
supplies.

The rendering on openstreetmap.org is pretty good: it just prints the bay
name at the marked point, and shows it across a reasonable range of scales.
There are some weird cases with nested bays, but those are weird on the
nautical charts, too.

Merging all of these thousands of official "bay" points into the
surrounding coastal polygons sounds like an editing nightmare. And the data
wouldn't be better—the underlying official sources are all points, anyway.

2014-10-27 16:04 GMT-04:00 Ilpo Järvinen :

> On Mon, 27 Oct 2014, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:
>
> >
> > 2014-10-27 17:37 GMT+01:00 Christoph Hormann :
> >
> >   But this is exactly what does not work with a hand mapped
> >   polygon either
> >   since the edge of the bay is not well defined.
> >
> >
> >
> > it will work in most cases, and only give questionable information when
> you
> > are close to the fuzzy end towards the open sea (or another bay). In
> these
> > cases there won't be a correct answer from a human either, because it
> simply
> > isn't clear where that border is.
>
> IMHO, the most controversial thing in this all is that the approach
> Christoph is proposing would require us to not map natural=bay but
> "natural=bay_entry" instead, and that is obviously exactly where the fuzzy
> part is. That is, a mapper would be forced to place bay nodes into the
> place where nobody can say for sure if it's in the bay or not.
>
> Otherwise his algorithm would obviously end up failing because of arbitary
> picked threshold that makes lots of assumptions about the shape of the
> bay. The main assumptions are about width of the bay and depth at the
> nearest coastline that is not in the either extreme of the bay. Consider
> e.g. a very wide bay which has two pockets but at the middle you have some
> penisula extending towards the bay entry and thus also towards the bay
> node. But it would certainly work in many cases just fine like most of
> the algorithms tend to do (of course, assuming we'd map bay_entry instead
> of bay).
>
> --
>  i.
>
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Ilpo Järvinen
On Mon, 27 Oct 2014, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:

> 
> 2014-10-27 17:37 GMT+01:00 Christoph Hormann :
> 
>   But this is exactly what does not work with a hand mapped
>   polygon either
>   since the edge of the bay is not well defined.
> 
> 
> 
> it will work in most cases, and only give questionable information when you
> are close to the fuzzy end towards the open sea (or another bay). In these
> cases there won't be a correct answer from a human either, because it simply
> isn't clear where that border is.

IMHO, the most controversial thing in this all is that the approach 
Christoph is proposing would require us to not map natural=bay but 
"natural=bay_entry" instead, and that is obviously exactly where the fuzzy 
part is. That is, a mapper would be forced to place bay nodes into the 
place where nobody can say for sure if it's in the bay or not.

Otherwise his algorithm would obviously end up failing because of arbitary 
picked threshold that makes lots of assumptions about the shape of the 
bay. The main assumptions are about width of the bay and depth at the 
nearest coastline that is not in the either extreme of the bay. Consider 
e.g. a very wide bay which has two pockets but at the middle you have some 
penisula extending towards the bay entry and thus also towards the bay 
node. But it would certainly work in many cases just fine like most of 
the algorithms tend to do (of course, assuming we'd map bay_entry instead 
of bay).

-- 
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer
2014-10-27 17:37 GMT+01:00 Christoph Hormann :

>
> But this is exactly what does not work with a hand mapped polygon either
> since the edge of the bay is not well defined.
>


it will work in most cases, and only give questionable information when you
are close to the fuzzy end towards the open sea (or another bay). In these
cases there won't be a correct answer from a human either, because it
simply isn't clear where that border is.


>
> It seems to me the desire to have bays mapped as polygons here stems
> from the desire to apply such simple concepts as 'you are either inside
> or outside the bay'.



yes, but even more: how big is this bay (compared to others), are there
bays inside bays etc. (hierarchy, nesting)

cheers,
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 27/10/2014, Christoph Hormann  wrote:
> On Monday 27 October 2014, Janko Mihelić wrote:
>>
>> Reverse geocoding. A boat comes to a bay, captain looks on a screen,
>> and it says "You are in Guantanamo Bay".
>
> But this is exactly what does not work with a hand mapped polygon either
> since the edge of the bay is not well defined.
>
> It seems to me the desire to have bays mapped as polygons here stems
> from the desire to apply such simple concepts as 'you are either inside
> or outside the bay'.  But reality is more complex than that.  Mapping
> them as polygons would be nothing but cargo cult towards this aim.
>
> A node tagged natural=bay means: the water around here, up to the coast
> around and out to open water for a similar distance, maybe somewhat
> further, is a bay and is named ...
>
> This is a much more accurate description of reality than a polygon.

How can a description that is definitely-inaccurate (nodes) fit
reallity better than a description that is probably inaccurate ? If
your aim is to make it clear that the map is as inaccurate as
reallity, ok. But :
* even if osm data is inaccurate, it's better for all data consumers
to interpret that data in the same way, and make the same mistakes.
Mapping bays as nodes add implementation-uncertainty on top of
data-uncertainty.
* there are surely cases where the accuracy is very good. But I still
wouldn't trust an implementation to guess the area from a node. As a
mapper I can control the osm data, not the heuristics that consumers
implement.
* even though nothing is standardized, there are ways to tag that a
geometry is fuzzy/inaccurate.

Nobody is forcing you to switch to polygons today. Go ahead and keep
using nodes if you feel it's enough; it actually is for many usecases.
But don't think that nodes describe reallity better. And let people
upgrade nodes to areas if they're willing to do the work.

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Christoph Hormann
On Monday 27 October 2014, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
> >
> > Have you tried it?
> >
> > On the contrary - due to its simplicity it is a very robust
> > algorithm, it will hardly ever generate something completely wrong
> > and fail gracefully in difficult cases.  And as said it is strait
> > away to extend this approach to specifically take care of cases
> > where it does not work so well.
>
> Since AFAIK it's not implemented anywhere yet (?), neither of us has
> tried it. And I guess we have different thresholds as to what
> constitudes "completely wrong". I'd be happy to be proved wrong on
> all accounts.

Since for label rendering you don't really need a polygon there is 
little point in actually generating it in the first place.  But i have 
implemented and used techniques not unlike the algorithm described for 
rendering bay and strait labels, like in 

http://maps.imagico.de/#map=3/80.707/55.862&lang=en&l=dark&r=fj&ui=0

The funny thing is the first thing i do for this is reduce all features 
mapped as polygons to a node since the polygon is useless, its outer 
limit is arbitrary and the sides defined by the coastline do not match 
the generalized coastline used to render the map.

>
> >> (in other words, not treat them
> >> any different than any other area-like obbjects in osm).
> >
> > You mean like place=town, place=city etc?
>
> Yes, and like everything that can be mapped as a polygon:
> amenity=hospital, leisure=pitch, natural=wood, etc etc etc.

as well as highway=*, waterway=*, natural=tree...

-- 
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Christoph Hormann
On Monday 27 October 2014, Janko Mihelić wrote:
> > I can't help but notice that in the whole discussion here no
> > argument has been put formward indicating a practical advantage of
> > bays mapped as polygons other than the ease of rendering labels.
>
> Reverse geocoding. A boat comes to a bay, captain looks on a screen,
> and it says "You are in Guantanamo Bay".

But this is exactly what does not work with a hand mapped polygon either 
since the edge of the bay is not well defined.

It seems to me the desire to have bays mapped as polygons here stems 
from the desire to apply such simple concepts as 'you are either inside 
or outside the bay'.  But reality is more complex than that.  Mapping 
them as polygons would be nothing but cargo cult towards this aim.

A node tagged natural=bay means: the water around here, up to the coast 
around and out to open water for a similar distance, maybe somewhat 
further, is a bay and is named ...

This is a much more accurate description of reality than a polygon.

-- 
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http://www.imagico.de/

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Janko Mihelić
2014-10-27 16:24 GMT+01:00 Christoph Hormann :

>
> I can't help but notice that in the whole discussion here no argument
> has been put formward indicating a practical advantage of bays mapped
> as polygons other than the ease of rendering labels.
>

Reverse geocoding. A boat comes to a bay, captain looks on a screen, and it
says "You are in Guantanamo Bay". So with your suggestion either the
application is going to need a preprocessed database, or it will have to
make it's own fuzzy logic.

If it's so easy to make that logic, why don't you make a little script, and
we can try it out on our examples. If it works in 95% of cases, maybe
that's the best solution. We can map the rest 5% with polygons. Making it
easy for the mapper is certainly a worthwhile cause.

Janko
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 27/10/2014, Christoph Hormann  wrote:
> On Monday 27 October 2014, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
>> >
>> > This extremely simple approach will probably result in reasonable
>> > polygons for label placement in more than half the cases.  You can
>> > easily improve the algorithm of course to properly deal with
>> > various special cases, in particular the case of small islands
>> > within a bay deserves consideration.
>>
>> That's a very fragile algorythm.
>
> Have you tried it?
>
> On the contrary - due to its simplicity it is a very robust algorithm,
> it will hardly ever generate something completely wrong and fail
> gracefully in difficult cases.  And as said it is strait away to extend
> this approach to specifically take care of cases where it does not work
> so well.

Since AFAIK it's not implemented anywhere yet (?), neither of us has
tried it. And I guess we have different thresholds as to what
constitudes "completely wrong". I'd be happy to be proved wrong on all
accounts.

>> [...] And until you get something working
>> reasonably well upstreamed in all data consumers, we mappers should
>> bite the bullet and map bays as areas
>
> No, that is not how OSM works.  The mappers can choose a method to map
> they deem appropriate - which in this case quite clearly is nodes (less
> than 0.5 percent ways and relations according to taginfo).  If you want
> to get the mappers to change their mapping you need to convince them
> that it is better to do so

That's what this thread is about : convincing mappers that a
particular way of mapping bays is better. It seems we agree on the
process, if not (yet) on the result.

I wouldn't read too much into the current node/way statistics: they
can either be a sign of imports, or simply of approximate mapping that
hasn't been refined yet (which is the norm in OSM).

> and just making it easier for those
> rendering maps is not a convincing argument, even in cases where unlike
> here there is no additional work involved.  Of course by not rendering
> bays mapped as nodes in the standard style you could 'encourage'
> mappers to change their approach.  This however would be mapping for
> the renderer which is generally frowned upon.
>
> I can't help but notice that in the whole discussion here no argument
> has been put formward indicating a practical advantage of bays mapped
> as polygons other than the ease of rendering labels.

I really don't care that much about rendering. If that was the main
concern, adding some kind of "importance" tag to the bay nodes would
be better. And implementing your algorythm for the renderer, while
quirky, would probably yield very similar rendering results to the
mapping-as-polygon method, with no mapper effort.

I actually care about mapping correctness. A bay is not a point in
space, it's an area. Mapping it as such makes deciding which ones to
render at low zoom easyer, but that's just a bonus.


>> (in other words, not treat them
>> any different than any other area-like obbjects in osm).
>
> You mean like place=town, place=city etc?

Yes, and like everything that can be mapped as a polygon:
amenity=hospital, leisure=pitch, natural=wood, etc etc etc.

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer
2014-10-27 16:24 GMT+01:00 Christoph Hormann :

> No, that is not how OSM works.  The mappers can choose a method to map
> they deem appropriate - which in this case quite clearly is nodes (less
> than 0.5 percent ways and relations according to taginfo).
>


the same holds true for countries, there are 0% mapped as ways, and only 7
are relations (who knows which kind of), they are all mapped as nodes:
http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/place=country
is a node the best representation for a country? Surely it is the easiest
to map. Shall we encourage this kind of tagging? IMHO it is completely
broken, but it is OK to render a label. If all you want to know about bays
is where to best put a label then nodes are a good way to do it.

cheers,
Martin
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Christoph Hormann
On Monday 27 October 2014, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
> >
> > This extremely simple approach will probably result in reasonable
> > polygons for label placement in more than half the cases.  You can
> > easily improve the algorithm of course to properly deal with
> > various special cases, in particular the case of small islands
> > within a bay deserves consideration.
>
> That's a very fragile algorythm.

Have you tried it?

On the contrary - due to its simplicity it is a very robust algorithm, 
it will hardly ever generate something completely wrong and fail 
gracefully in difficult cases.  And as said it is strait away to extend 
this approach to specifically take care of cases where it does not work 
so well.

> [...] And until you get something working
> reasonably well upstreamed in all data consumers, we mappers should
> bite the bullet and map bays as areas 

No, that is not how OSM works.  The mappers can choose a method to map 
they deem appropriate - which in this case quite clearly is nodes (less 
than 0.5 percent ways and relations according to taginfo).  If you want 
to get the mappers to change their mapping you need to convince them 
that it is better to do so and just making it easier for those 
rendering maps is not a convincing argument, even in cases where unlike 
here there is no additional work involved.  Of course by not rendering 
bays mapped as nodes in the standard style you could 'encourage' 
mappers to change their approach.  This however would be mapping for 
the renderer which is generally frowned upon.

I can't help but notice that in the whole discussion here no argument 
has been put formward indicating a practical advantage of bays mapped 
as polygons other than the ease of rendering labels.

> (in other words, not treat them
> any different than any other area-like obbjects in osm).

You mean like place=town, place=city etc?

SCNR.

-- 
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 27/10/2014, Richard Z.  wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 10:44:01AM +0100, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
>> I'm really curious what your method to figure out the bay area from
>> the node is, because even as a human I find that most bay nodes can
>> lead to many different interpretations.
>
> you don't. Al that the node says is "somewhere there is a bay called
> XXX"

I was asking a rhetorical question, really ;)


> Most of the time there is very little agreement or hard data about the
> extents and hierarchy of bay naming. Sources from different countries will
> make different subdivisions. Great fun with multipolygons and even with
> perfect tagging and computer algorithm we get approximate results at best.

Yes, that's the main problem with bay mapping, and probably
contributes to the fact that we have so many bays mapped as nodes,
because mappers themselves don't know the extent of the bay (good
luck, algorythm ! :p).

But we regularly map approximate features, nothing new here. And I'll
always prefer a "source=guesswork" polygon over a node automatically
turned into an area using computer-mediated guesswork from a developer
that didn't see the area.

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 27/10/2014, Christoph Hormann  wrote:
> On Monday 27 October 2014, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
>> I'm really curious what your method to figure out the bay area from
>> the node is, because even as a human I find that most bay nodes can
>> lead to many different interpretations.
>
> There are a lot of different possibilities to approach this.  A very
> simple method would be:
>
> - find the point on the coastline closest to the bay node.
> - collect all coastline segments within 2-3 times the distance of the
> closest node.
> - connect all open ends of these coastlines with the closest other open
> end.
> - assemble a polygon and use it.
>
> This extremely simple approach will probably result in reasonable
> polygons for label placement in more than half the cases.  You can
> easily improve the algorithm of course to properly deal with various
> special cases, in particular the case of small islands within a bay
> deserves consideration.

That's a very fragile algorythm. It depends on the mapper placing the
node at a strategic point. And it has problem with long thin bays for
example. You might start to see mappers tune the node position to
match your algorythm. And then you'll tune your algorythm, breaking
the mapper's tuning. It's quirky and might be expensive to run.

Having an algorythm to turn nodes into areas is not a bad thing, since
we currently have many more bay nodes than areas in the db. But it's a
fallback at best. And until you get something working reasonably well
upstreamed in all data consumers, we mappers should bite the bullet
and map bays as areas (in other words, not treat them any different
than any other area-like obbjects in osm).

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Richard Z.
On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 12:28:39PM +0100, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:
> 2014-10-27 12:16 GMT+01:00 Richard Z. :
> 
> > > Besides, we really need to deal with object that have fuzzy borders
> > > already, e.g., some of the natural=wetland object come to my mind as an
> > > example. I quickly browsed through the related pages and discussions, for
> > > some strange reason the fuzzy border issue seems to not have been raised
> > > there at all? I suppose it's currently left solely to mappers
> > > discretion where to put the the edges.
> >
> > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Fuzzy
> >
> 
> 
> 
> I don't like this proposal. IMHO we do indeed need a way to map fuzzy
> stuff, but it shouldn't be done by drawing an "unfuzzy" way (or node or
> polygon) and then declare by tags that it is not to be taken literally,
> i.e. that there is no such way in reality but just a fuzzy border somewhere
> near that way. Rather we should tackle this on the datatype (or relation)
> level and invent some fuzzy objects that are already fuzzy in the way they
> are mapped (e.g. a group of nodes (or other objects) that define an area by
> saying "I'm inside" and maybe "I'm outside", so that dataconsumers could
> calculate an approximation for this area for their needs).

I don't endorse the fuzzy proposal but would like to note that many our
objects boundaries can be either razor sharp or extremely fuzzy so making
that a property of the object is not a good idea.
Consider the boundary of natural=forest, where it ends adjoning a road it 
is precise to one meter but where it borders natural=scrub the boundary may 
be fuzzy to several hundred meters.

Richard

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer
2014-10-27 12:16 GMT+01:00 Richard Z. :

> > Besides, we really need to deal with object that have fuzzy borders
> > already, e.g., some of the natural=wetland object come to my mind as an
> > example. I quickly browsed through the related pages and discussions, for
> > some strange reason the fuzzy border issue seems to not have been raised
> > there at all? I suppose it's currently left solely to mappers
> > discretion where to put the the edges.
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Fuzzy
>



I don't like this proposal. IMHO we do indeed need a way to map fuzzy
stuff, but it shouldn't be done by drawing an "unfuzzy" way (or node or
polygon) and then declare by tags that it is not to be taken literally,
i.e. that there is no such way in reality but just a fuzzy border somewhere
near that way. Rather we should tackle this on the datatype (or relation)
level and invent some fuzzy objects that are already fuzzy in the way they
are mapped (e.g. a group of nodes (or other objects) that define an area by
saying "I'm inside" and maybe "I'm outside", so that dataconsumers could
calculate an approximation for this area for their needs).

cheers,
Martin
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Richard Z.
On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 12:33:48PM +0200, Ilpo Järvinen wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Oct 2014, Christoph Hormann wrote:
> 
> > On Sunday 26 October 2014, Mateusz Konieczny wrote:
> > > > Furthermore the outer edge of a bay, i.e. the edge that is not
> > > > coastline is usually not well defined and would require an
> > > > arbitrary cutoff.
> > >
> > > Yes, cutoff is unfortunately quite arbitrary. But node placement is
> > > completely arbitrary - and lacks important information.
> > 
> > I don't see what information is missing and cannot be easily determined 
> > automatically with a properly placed node that is contained in an 
> > area - except for the outer edge of course, which is usually 
> > ill-defined though as you said yourself.
> 
> Any data consumer could quite easily, if not trivially, detect that 
> fuzzy edge in this case if it cares about it in the first place (I've
> have some trouble in figuring out a sensible use case in which it would 
> make a difference to know where the fuzzy border of a bays is).
> 
> Besides, we really need to deal with object that have fuzzy borders 
> already, e.g., some of the natural=wetland object come to my mind as an 
> example. I quickly browsed through the related pages and discussions, for 
> some strange reason the fuzzy border issue seems to not have been raised 
> there at all? I suppose it's currently left solely to mappers
> discretion where to put the the edges.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Fuzzy

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/List_of_proposals_regarding_landuse,_geology,_geography_and_vegetation
 (my early draft for the purpose of getting some overview over similar issues)

Richard

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Richard Z.
On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 10:44:01AM +0100, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
> On 26/10/2014, Christoph Hormann  wrote:
> > I don't see what information is missing and cannot be easily determined
> > automatically with a properly placed node that is contained in an
> > area - except for the outer edge of course, which is usually
> > ill-defined though as you said yourself.
> >
> > If you think about it a bit and do not try to place the node where you
> > would place the label (which depends on the map projection anyway)
> > properly placing a node for a bay is usually quite simple.  The most
> > difficult are long, fjord-like bays where a way along them would be
> > more appropriate.
> 
> I'm really curious what your method to figure out the bay area from
> the node is, because even as a human I find that most bay nodes can
> lead to many different interpretations.

you don't. Al that the node says is "somewhere there is a bay called
XXX"

> A computer algorythm would
> probably get it wrong most of the time. Think back to the "bays within
> bays" situation. How far along the coast do this bay extend ? Are
> those two nearby nodes separate bays or overlapping ones ? 

Most of the time there is very little agreement or hard data about the 
extents and hierarchy of bay naming. Sources from different countries will
make different subdivisions. Great fun with multipolygons and even with 
perfect tagging and computer algorithm we get approximate results at best.


Richard

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Ilpo Järvinen
On Mon, 27 Oct 2014, Marc Gemis wrote:

> 
> On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 11:33 AM, Ilpo Järvinen 
> wrote:
>   Besides, we really need to deal with object that have fuzzy
>   borders
>   already, e.g., some of the natural=wetland object come to my
>   mind as an
>   example. I quickly browsed through the related pages and
>   discussions, for
>   some strange reason the fuzzy border issue seems to not have
>   been raised
>   there at all? I suppose it's currently left solely to mappers
>   discretion where to put the the edges.
> 
> 
> It has been discussed in the context of the Alps, The Black Forest, etc. see
> [1]
> 
> regards
> 
> m
> 
> [1] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2013-October/015224.h
> tml

There certainly are discussions, I also found some proposal from 2009. But 
my point was that this discussion not in the context of an approved tag 
that typically has somewhat fuzzy borders. Why it's not a problem that 
would be worth to mention with wetlands but suddently a major issue with 
bays, I really don't know. It makes very little sense to me given how much 
easier the fuzzy part is to isolate from bays than from wetlands with 
a fully autonomous algorithm.


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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Christoph Hormann
On Monday 27 October 2014, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
> >
> > If you think about it a bit and do not try to place the node where
> > you would place the label (which depends on the map projection
> > anyway) properly placing a node for a bay is usually quite simple. 
> > The most difficult are long, fjord-like bays where a way along them
> > would be more appropriate.
>
> I'm really curious what your method to figure out the bay area from
> the node is, because even as a human I find that most bay nodes can
> lead to many different interpretations.

There are a lot of different possibilities to approach this.  A very 
simple method would be:

- find the point on the coastline closest to the bay node.
- collect all coastline segments within 2-3 times the distance of the 
closest node.
- connect all open ends of these coastlines with the closest other open 
end.
- assemble a polygon and use it.

This extremely simple approach will probably result in reasonable 
polygons for label placement in more than half the cases.  You can 
easily improve the algorithm of course to properly deal with various 
special cases, in particular the case of small islands within a bay 
deserves consideration.

> Some coastline ways would belong to more relations, so what ? They
> already usually belong to 3-4 administrative boundary relations,

Yes - and boundary relations are well known to be constantly broken and 
a pain to maintain even for experienced mappers.

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Marc Gemis
On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 11:33 AM, Ilpo Järvinen 
wrote:

> Besides, we really need to deal with object that have fuzzy borders
> already, e.g., some of the natural=wetland object come to my mind as an
> example. I quickly browsed through the related pages and discussions, for
> some strange reason the fuzzy border issue seems to not have been raised
> there at all? I suppose it's currently left solely to mappers
> discretion where to put the the edges.
>

It has been discussed in the context of the Alps, The Black Forest, etc.
see [1]

regards

m

[1]
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2013-October/015224.html
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Ilpo Järvinen
On Sun, 26 Oct 2014, Christoph Hormann wrote:

> On Sunday 26 October 2014, Mateusz Konieczny wrote:
> > > Furthermore the outer edge of a bay, i.e. the edge that is not
> > > coastline is usually not well defined and would require an
> > > arbitrary cutoff.
> >
> > Yes, cutoff is unfortunately quite arbitrary. But node placement is
> > completely arbitrary - and lacks important information.
> 
> I don't see what information is missing and cannot be easily determined 
> automatically with a properly placed node that is contained in an 
> area - except for the outer edge of course, which is usually 
> ill-defined though as you said yourself.

Any data consumer could quite easily, if not trivially, detect that 
fuzzy edge in this case if it cares about it in the first place (I've
have some trouble in figuring out a sensible use case in which it would 
make a difference to know where the fuzzy border of a bays is).

Besides, we really need to deal with object that have fuzzy borders 
already, e.g., some of the natural=wetland object come to my mind as an 
example. I quickly browsed through the related pages and discussions, for 
some strange reason the fuzzy border issue seems to not have been raised 
there at all? I suppose it's currently left solely to mappers
discretion where to put the the edges.


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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Janko Mihelić
I had a proposal about mapping peninsulas [1] and it involved adding
peninsula=* tags to coastlines. I think bays should be mapped the same way,
on coastline ways. The question is what tags we should use. Adding new ways
and gluing them to coastlines, when coastlines themselves make a bay is in
my opinion superfluous.


[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Peninsula

Janko  Mihelić

2014-10-27 11:03 GMT+01:00 Martin Koppenhoefer :

>
> 2014-10-26 21:38 GMT+01:00 Christoph Hormann :
>
>> Specific arguments aside - i am not sure if you realize the consequences
>> it would have if subareas of oceans would generally be mapped as
>> polygons - large bays usually contain smaller bays and are parts of a
>> sea and there might be a strait between an island and the coast within
>> that bay.  If you want to edit the coastline in such situation you
>> would end up having to deal with a handful of convoluted multipolygon
>> relations, some of them of colossal size.
>>
>
>
> yes, you'd end up with nested multipolygons, some of the huge (the latter
> might become a problem). On the other hand it is clear that nodes don't
> convey any of the hirarchy or size information and hence are a poor
> representation.
>
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer
2014-10-26 21:38 GMT+01:00 Christoph Hormann :

> Specific arguments aside - i am not sure if you realize the consequences
> it would have if subareas of oceans would generally be mapped as
> polygons - large bays usually contain smaller bays and are parts of a
> sea and there might be a strait between an island and the coast within
> that bay.  If you want to edit the coastline in such situation you
> would end up having to deal with a handful of convoluted multipolygon
> relations, some of them of colossal size.
>


yes, you'd end up with nested multipolygons, some of the huge (the latter
might become a problem). On the other hand it is clear that nodes don't
convey any of the hirarchy or size information and hence are a poor
representation.
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer
2014-10-26 19:00 GMT+01:00 Christoph Hormann :

> Doable for sure but an awfully bad idea, mapping bays as areas would
> mean two features for the same object (coastline polygon and bay area).
>



I don't see "one object". There is a coastline (linear division between
land and sea, NOT a polygon itself) and there is a bay (polygon of a part
of the sea).
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer
2014-10-26 17:12 GMT+01:00 Mateusz Konieczny :

> Please, try mapping bays as areas - not as nodes.




+1. Please do this also for place=country and other place objects that are
indeed describing polygons and not points.
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-27 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 26/10/2014, Christoph Hormann  wrote:
> I don't see what information is missing and cannot be easily determined
> automatically with a properly placed node that is contained in an
> area - except for the outer edge of course, which is usually
> ill-defined though as you said yourself.
>
> If you think about it a bit and do not try to place the node where you
> would place the label (which depends on the map projection anyway)
> properly placing a node for a bay is usually quite simple.  The most
> difficult are long, fjord-like bays where a way along them would be
> more appropriate.

I'm really curious what your method to figure out the bay area from
the node is, because even as a human I find that most bay nodes can
lead to many different interpretations. A computer algorythm would
probably get it wrong most of the time. Think back to the "bays within
bays" situation. How far along the coast do this bay extend ? Are
those two nearby nodes separate bays or overlapping ones ? The
situation is even harder to gauge when there is no imagery to give a
sense of scale. I'm sure most mappers just put the node where they'd
put the label (blissfully ignoring scales and projections).
Bays-as-polygons bring real value by sorting out this mess.

> Specific arguments aside - i am not sure if you realize the consequences
> it would have if subareas of oceans would generally be mapped as
> polygons - large bays usually contain smaller bays and are parts of a
> sea and there might be a strait between an island and the coast within
> that bay.  If you want to edit the coastline in such situation you
> would end up having to deal with a handful of convoluted multipolygon
> relations, some of them of colossal size.  Properly editing coastlines
> is difficult for beginners in the first place.  This would make it
> borderline impossible.

Some coastline ways would belong to more relations, so what ? They
already usually belong to 3-4 administrative boundary relations,
adding 1-2 bays won't make a big difference. I'm tired of the
"multipolygons are complicated, avoid them" argument, it should be
"multipolygons are complicated, make them simpler".

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-26 Thread Richard Z.
On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 05:12:20PM +0100, Mateusz Konieczny wrote:
> Please, try mapping bays as areas - not as nodes.
> 
> It is really rare to see it done this way - but it is doable, see
> http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/5CQ

not practical in most cases. Almost every bay is part of a larger bay
and so forth. The borders and hierarchy are very arbitrary.

The nodes, as much as they suck give a quite realistic picture of this
fuzzy state.

Richard


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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-26 Thread Christoph Hormann
On Sunday 26 October 2014, Mateusz Konieczny wrote:
> > Furthermore the outer edge of a bay, i.e. the edge that is not
> > coastline is usually not well defined and would require an
> > arbitrary cutoff.
>
> Yes, cutoff is unfortunately quite arbitrary. But node placement is
> completely arbitrary - and lacks important information.

I don't see what information is missing and cannot be easily determined 
automatically with a properly placed node that is contained in an 
area - except for the outer edge of course, which is usually 
ill-defined though as you said yourself.

If you think about it a bit and do not try to place the node where you 
would place the label (which depends on the map projection anyway) 
properly placing a node for a bay is usually quite simple.  The most 
difficult are long, fjord-like bays where a way along them would be 
more appropriate.

Specific arguments aside - i am not sure if you realize the consequences 
it would have if subareas of oceans would generally be mapped as 
polygons - large bays usually contain smaller bays and are parts of a 
sea and there might be a strait between an island and the coast within 
that bay.  If you want to edit the coastline in such situation you 
would end up having to deal with a handful of convoluted multipolygon 
relations, some of them of colossal size.  Properly editing coastlines 
is difficult for beginners in the first place.  This would make it 
borderline impossible.

-- 
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http://www.imagico.de/

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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-26 Thread Mateusz Konieczny
> Doable for sure but an awfully bad idea, mapping bays as areas would
> mean two features for the same object (coastline polygon and bay area).

Coastline polygon and bay area is not the same object. Yes, part of border
is
shared - it is nothing wrong. Also it is possible to use for example
multipolygons.

> Furthermore the outer edge of a bay, i.e. the edge that is not
> coastline is usually not well defined and would require an arbitrary
> cutoff.

Yes, cutoff is unfortunately quite arbitrary. But node placement is
completely arbitrary - and lacks important information.


2014-10-26 19:00 GMT+01:00 Christoph Hormann :

> On Sunday 26 October 2014, Mateusz Konieczny wrote:
> > Please, try mapping bays as areas - not as nodes.
> >
> > It is really rare to see it done this way - but it is doable, see
> > http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/5CQ
>
> Doable for sure but an awfully bad idea, mapping bays as areas would
> mean two features for the same object (coastline polygon and bay area).
> Furthermore the outer edge of a bay, i.e. the edge that is not
> coastline is usually not well defined and would require an arbitrary
> cutoff.
>
> Maintaining bay polygons would be an awful mess, they would end up
> frequently being broken.  And there is no gain at all in terms of
> substantial information in the database compared to nodes (since the
> coastline is already mapped and the non-coastline edge is arbitrary).
>
> The reason you would prefer areas is probably simply that this would
> make it easier for to use in rendering - but making life more difficult
> for the mapper just to make it easier for the renderer is not a good
> idea.  Based on the coastlines and the bay nodes you can quite easily
> generate approximate bay polygons that can be used for the purpose of
> labeling for example (yes, even for the Paulsdorfer Bucht).
>
> This argument by the way was already made in a slightly different
> context in
>
> https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/804
>
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> http://www.imagico.de/
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Re: [Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-26 Thread Christoph Hormann
On Sunday 26 October 2014, Mateusz Konieczny wrote:
> Please, try mapping bays as areas - not as nodes.
>
> It is really rare to see it done this way - but it is doable, see
> http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/5CQ

Doable for sure but an awfully bad idea, mapping bays as areas would 
mean two features for the same object (coastline polygon and bay area).  
Furthermore the outer edge of a bay, i.e. the edge that is not 
coastline is usually not well defined and would require an arbitrary 
cutoff.

Maintaining bay polygons would be an awful mess, they would end up 
frequently being broken.  And there is no gain at all in terms of 
substantial information in the database compared to nodes (since the 
coastline is already mapped and the non-coastline edge is arbitrary).

The reason you would prefer areas is probably simply that this would 
make it easier for to use in rendering - but making life more difficult 
for the mapper just to make it easier for the renderer is not a good 
idea.  Based on the coastlines and the bay nodes you can quite easily 
generate approximate bay polygons that can be used for the purpose of 
labeling for example (yes, even for the Paulsdorfer Bucht).

This argument by the way was already made in a slightly different 
context in

https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/804

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[Tagging] natural=bay as nodes are evil

2014-10-26 Thread Mateusz Konieczny
Please, try mapping bays as areas - not as nodes.

It is really rare to see it done this way - but it is doable, see
http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/5CQ

Bay mapped as node is hard to process - for example: deciding whatever name
should be
rendered. It is completely impossible to retrieve information whatever name
applies to
some small area or larger one. Obviously label for tiny bay should not
displayed at the same
time with the same style as label for bay thousands times larger. But
getting information
about area from natural=bay mapped as node in most cases it is impossible
task even for
human - see
http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2681179665#map=11/53.7700/14.7670
for an example.

taginfo lists 783 ways vs 34 585 nodes. Situation is even worse, as some
bays are marked
as unclosed ways what is not much better than node (human may now
reconstruct area,
but this task is still nearly impossible for computer).

Overpass turbo link with query for natural=bay nodes:
http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/5CW
(note: please, no changes based on guesswork. You may move map and select
run to
retrieve data for your area).
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