Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-13 Thread Andy Robinson
Is the version from os.openstreetmap the original?
http://os.openstreetmap.org/data/
Cheers
Andy


 -Original Message-
 From: Borbus [mailto:bor...@gmail.com]
 Sent: 12 December 2011 22:14
 To: talk-gb@openstreetmap.org
 Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import
 
 On 12/12/11 21:49, Jason Cunningham wrote:
  Original release of Vectormap had more detailed water features, but
  this years release appears to have been dumbed down. If you got them
  I'd use the first detailed release of water features.
 
 Does anyone know where copies of the original release are available?
 
 --
 Borbus.
 
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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-13 Thread Graham Jones
If not, I have got them on dvd if anyone would like them - probably quicker
for me to post them than upload to a server - I prefer handling the new
bigger files because it keeps the style files for rendering simpler.

Graham

from my phone

On 13 Dec 2011 08:51, Andy Robinson ajrli...@gmail.com wrote:

Is the version from os.openstreetmap the original?
http://os.openstreetmap.org/data/
Cheers
Andy



 -Original Message-
 From: Borbus [mailto:bor...@gmail.com]
 Sent: 12 December 2011 22:...
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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-13 Thread Ed Loach
Andy asked:

 Is the version from os.openstreetmap the original?
 http://os.openstreetmap.org/data/

Looking at TM, the original zip was about 74MB and the newer one is
about 44MB which seems to be the one available on the above link.

Ed


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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-13 Thread Ed Avis
Perhaps you should cross-check the OS water features against Bing imagery.
That would eliminate some of the errors from trusting any one source too much.
Of course it still wouldn't be as good as walking around the outside of each
water feature with a GPS to get the boundary, but I can say from experience that
this takes a very long time!

In some parts of the country there are waterways traced from out-of-copyright
OS maps or from Street View tiles.  Getting the shapes from OS VectorMap will
certainly be an improvement on that.  In my opinion it will also be an
improvement compared to not having the water features at all.

-- 
Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com




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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-13 Thread Chris Hill

On 13/12/11 11:05, Ed Avis wrote:

In some parts of the country there are waterways traced from out-of-copyright
OS maps or from Street View tiles.  Getting the shapes from OS VectorMap will
certainly be an improvement on that.  In my opinion it will also be an
improvement compared to not having the water features at all.

The area to be careful about is coastline. Some of the VMD coastline 
data seems older than StreetView and on quickly eroding coastlines the 
more recent the reference the better. Surveying private cliff tops or 
walking under crumbling cliffs against a rising tide makes surveying 
awkward too.


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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-13 Thread Richard Fairhurst
Ed Avis wrote:
 In some parts of the country there are waterways traced from out-of-
 copyright OS maps or from Street View tiles.  Getting the shapes from 
 OS VectorMap will certainly be an improvement on that.

Absolutely. Some of the tracing from NPE appears to have been done either
from the really old roughly-rectified imagery (which was never meant for
tracing, only for postcode placement at npemap.org.uk), and most of it was
done without aligning the imagery to ground-truthed features... both of
which are pretty big no-nos for accurate tracing from historic sources. It's
good to have the data in there, but if we can improve on it, we should, and
VMD offers a chance to do that.

cheers
Richard



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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-13 Thread Pawel Stankiewicz
 From: Ed Loach e...@loach.me.uk

To: 'Borbus' bor...@gmail.com; talk-gb@openstreetmap.org
Sent: Monday, 12 December 2011, 11:40
Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import
 
 Have any large scale imports from this dataset already been done?
 
 Do people think this is a good idea?  Any suggestions regarding
the
 process?

As others said it is quite a bit of work. I've done the Tendring
district of Essex. The Vectormap data includes some water areas
which are now dry, some swimming pools belonging to larger rural
properties (seem to be ignored in towns), and often need breaks in
streams joining up. So local knowledge is really needed and why I
only did the local area.


Really?
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.87974lon=1.26262zoom=15layers=M
I wonder who can know this maze of channels in such degree (s)he could improve 
significantly a long-term work of professionals from OS. A fisherman? Is there 
any fisherman? Or perhaps a maniac angler or a maniac canoeist. The same with 
drainage ditches with missing culverts. Maybe a farmer on own farm. And missing 
culverts can be easily spotted on the Bing without any local knowledge.
Although such import is far from being perfect it is much better than leaving a 
map as a terra incognita what is a big part of rural Britain on OSM.
Cheers
Pawel


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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-13 Thread Richard Fairhurst
Pawel Stankiewicz wrote:
 I wonder who can know this maze of channels in such 
 degree (s)he could improve significantly a long-term 
 work of professionals from OS.

Someone like the guy who wrote
www.localboating.co.uk/The%20Walton%20Backwaters.pdf , perhaps?

Richard



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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-13 Thread mick
On Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:23:39 +
Chris Hill o...@raggedred.net wrote:

 Surveying private cliff tops or walking under crumbling cliffs against a 
 rising tide makes surveying awkward too.
 
hmmph, some people have NO spirit of adventure

mick

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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-13 Thread Bogus Zaba

On 11/12/11 11:26, Borbus wrote:

First of all, when I say import I mean a manual import: reprojection of
OS shapefiles, conversion to OSM data and careful processing in JOSM
before uploading.

I'd really like to get all the water features from OS into OSM.  It's
very useful data and also makes maps prettier.  It's quite a laborious
task, though, as the data requires manual creation of multipolygons and
of course merging with any water features we already have.

I have already done a small amount here:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.6006lon=1.6362zoom=13layers=M
Although I have not joined together all gaps, just some gaps where a way
crosses it and it is obviously a conduit.

Now I have split the Vectormap square TG into smaller chunks which I
plan to process one by one and upload.  The amount of data in just this
square is quite large, but it's still probably less than half of Norfolk.

Have any large scale imports from this dataset already been done?

Do people think this is a good idea?  Any suggestions regarding the process?

Happy mapping,

Borbus.

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Plenty of those responding seem to be saying good idea in principle, 
but huge amount of effort required. Just to add my voice to this line 
and to provide a bit of experience.


Before I left the Environment Agency about three years ago I was 
involved in a project to do something a bit like this. The source data 
was different (Master Map) and the ambition for output was in some ways 
more modest (centreline only required), but it had to be (a) as 
comprehensive as possible including all the MasterMap features and (b) 
had to be topologically complete with no gaps etc. A lot of money was 
spent on the project and we were constantly having to re-draft budgets 
and time-scales as it became clear just how big a job this was going to 
be. The local knowledge (an important requirement as emphasised by many 
here) was provided by Agency Area staff who are familiar with the river 
network in their area.


The project was completed after I left, as a result of which the Agency 
does now have a good centreline river network (described along with 
other Agency datasets here 
http://publications.environment-agency.gov.uk/PDF/GEHO1210BTHN-E-E.pdf 
) but this took several years and considerable internal and consultancy 
human resource to compile. I think that at least some aspects of the 
detailed methodology used have been published. I will look into this and 
if I find it, will post links to this list.


I know that we have an army of enthusiastic volunteers, which can to 
some extent substitute for money and paid GIS technicians, but to be 
really comprehensive in this type of mapping requires access to many 
miles of water features which run through private land and cannot 
therefore be ground-truthed with the GPS-in-my-hand methodology.


In my local area (North East Wales) I have contributed to OSM data on 
roads, cycleways, footpaths and boundaries. I am not sure whether I 
would feel able to systematically improve much on the water features 
which I see in current OSM data - minor amendments in some easily 
accessible areas would be the best I could do. I would not feel 
comfortable importing features from OS Vector data which I would never 
be able to get around to seeing on the ground.


Bogus Zaba

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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-12 Thread Richard Mann
If the conclusion is that there's no point importing OS VMD water features
into OSM...

Would it make more sense to extract the water features and convert them
into a standalone osm.pbf, so they can be used as-is to make a background
layer (warts-and-all)?

Richard

On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 7:45 PM, Graham Jones grahamjones...@gmail.comwrote:

 On 11 December 2011 18:46, Tim François sk1pp...@yahoo.co.uk

 The entire process took a long, long time (we're talking many hours), as
 the OS data is all fragmented and needs joining up.

 This is one where it is certainly possible to import the data, but to do
 it manually is going to be a huge amount of effort, and I wonder if it is
 really worth the effort?

 I see the main benefit of OSM in providing 'added value' geographic data
 that is not available in other freely available sources.   Last time I made
 a map of an outdoor area, I found that the OS Vector Map District (VMD)
 water features added a lot to it, because the OSM data was pretty plain.
 In the end I actually made the map from a mixture of OSM and VMD Data, with
 SRTM generated contours.
 I certainly used OSM footpaths and route relations (because they are not
 in any of the other data sets) - as I wanted to highlight a walking route.

 I used VMD waterways because they were far more complete than OSM.
 I think that for the area I was working on (Weardale) I used VMD roads
 too, because there are still a lot missing from OSM.

 Where I struggled was in woodland areas - you get a lot more if you use
 VMD, but I also know that quite a lot have been felled, which can be
 changed in OSM, but not VMD, so this was a difficult choice.   (You can see
 the output 
 herehttps://github.com/jones139/Mapnik-OSM-Styles/raw/master/weardale_way/image_vmd_fc.png
  (but
 there is something wrong with the grid on the version on that server,
 sorry!and the rendering style is not as pretty as the main OSM one).

 I wonder if a more productive use of our efforts would be in developing
 tools to make it easier to make such merged data maps and highlight the
 'value added' bits from OSM that make it stand out from a Land Ranger map?
[Things like showing all the industrial archeology, real ale pubs etc.].

 I am working (very slowly) on a tool that will pull together the required
 data to produce these sort of things and render it at high resolution for
 printing.It is not at the sort of state that I would publish it and
 recommend that someone just tries it (no nice front end), but it is getting
 there and I can make maps from it when I want to.  I would be happy to put
 more effort into it if there was interest (or anyone interested in
 helping!).

 One final thing is that if we do say that we will not import the VMD data
 into OSM, this means that it will not appear on the main OSM web site map.
   We could show off what is possible though by making a 'osm-uk' site with
 a web map that combines the various data sources in a web map?

 Regards


 Graham.
 --
 Graham Jones
 Hartlepool, UK.


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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-12 Thread Ed Loach
 Have any large scale imports from this dataset already been done?
 
 Do people think this is a good idea?  Any suggestions regarding
the
 process?

As others said it is quite a bit of work. I've done the Tendring
district of Essex. The Vectormap data includes some water areas
which are now dry, some swimming pools belonging to larger rural
properties (seem to be ignored in towns), and often need breaks in
streams joining up. So local knowledge is really needed and why I
only did the local area.

If you do the work though you will end up with OSM having a better,
more current set of such data than OS have currently released.

Ed


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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-12 Thread Richard Fairhurst
Graham Jones wrote:
 This is one where it is certainly possible to import the data, but to 
 do it manually is going to be a huge amount of effort, and I wonder 
 if it is really worth the effort?

I think it is, yes. If I may be so immodest to repeat myself from the IRC
quotes page on the wiki:

 ToeBee RichardF: right but in my mind keeping daily data up to date is
pretty much unreasonable on any kind of scale. At least currently 
 RichardF in my mind getting a bunch of amateurs to map the world is
pretty much unreasoHOLY SHIT WHAT IS THIS OPENSTREETMAP THING

The OS VMD water features have excellent geometries but can benefit, like
anything else, from the local knowledge that makes OSM great. Is this river
boatable? canoeable? Where are the rapids? Where are the shallows? What is
this 'pool' informally known as? 

At present only a few rivers are mapped in OSM to full 'riverbank' level;
even Britain's longest river, the Severn, has wide sections where OSM only
has a rough centreline. Clearly a bulk import would be entirely undesirable.
The manual approach could work much better.

The main practical obstacle, as I see it, is that OS in their infinite
wisdom have started supplying the shapefiles in 100km x 100km squares...
which are certainly far too large to wrangle within a browser-based editor
like P2, and I suspect some desktop editors may choke too. If someone were
to create either a download server for smaller tiles (10km x 10km or even
smaller), or a queryable API for the VMD dataset, we could get stuck in.

cheers
Richard



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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-12 Thread Andy Allan
On 12 December 2011 11:51, Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.net wrote:

 The main practical obstacle, as I see it, is that OS in their infinite
 wisdom have started supplying the shapefiles in 100km x 100km squares...
 which are certainly far too large to wrangle within a browser-based editor
 like P2, and I suspect some desktop editors may choke too. If someone were
 to create either a download server for smaller tiles (10km x 10km or even
 smaller), or a queryable API for the VMD dataset, we could get stuck in.

/me points to the Snapshot Server, which was designed entirely for the
situation where your background vector layer is too large to load all
in one go.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Snapshot_Server

Cheers,
Andy

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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-12 Thread Jason Cunningham
I try to add the rivers  streams when I can, but it always takes a lot of
work.
Previously didn't agree with adding straight from OS Vectormap without
fixing all of it's peculiarities, and was unhappy with a lot of woodland
added. But, I coming round to thinking OSM is about incremental
improvements, it doesn't have to be perfect first time, and the woodland
added is an improvement. Still wouldn't add without cleaning up the data
myself though, and there are a lot of water features, especially drains,
that are not really there on the ground.

Original release of Vectormap had more detailed water features, but this
years release appears to have been dumbed down. If you got them I'd use
the first detailed release of water features.

Jason

On 12 December 2011 11:40, Ed Loach e...@loach.me.uk wrote:

  Have any large scale imports from this dataset already been done?
 
  Do people think this is a good idea?  Any suggestions regarding
 the
  process?

 As others said it is quite a bit of work. I've done the Tendring
 district of Essex. The Vectormap data includes some water areas
 which are now dry, some swimming pools belonging to larger rural
 properties (seem to be ignored in towns), and often need breaks in
 streams joining up. So local knowledge is really needed and why I
 only did the local area.

 If you do the work though you will end up with OSM having a better,
 more current set of such data than OS have currently released.

 Ed


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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-12 Thread Borbus
On 12/12/11 21:49, Jason Cunningham wrote:
 Original release of Vectormap had more detailed water features, but this
 years release appears to have been dumbed down. If you got them I'd use
 the first detailed release of water features.

Does anyone know where copies of the original release are available?

-- 
Borbus.

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[Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-11 Thread Borbus
First of all, when I say import I mean a manual import: reprojection of
OS shapefiles, conversion to OSM data and careful processing in JOSM
before uploading.

I'd really like to get all the water features from OS into OSM.  It's
very useful data and also makes maps prettier.  It's quite a laborious
task, though, as the data requires manual creation of multipolygons and
of course merging with any water features we already have.

I have already done a small amount here:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.6006lon=1.6362zoom=13layers=M
Although I have not joined together all gaps, just some gaps where a way
crosses it and it is obviously a conduit.

Now I have split the Vectormap square TG into smaller chunks which I
plan to process one by one and upload.  The amount of data in just this
square is quite large, but it's still probably less than half of Norfolk.

Have any large scale imports from this dataset already been done?

Do people think this is a good idea?  Any suggestions regarding the process?

Happy mapping,

Borbus.

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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-11 Thread Chris Hill

On 11/12/11 11:26, Borbus wrote:

First of all, when I say import I mean a manual import: reprojection of
OS shapefiles, conversion to OSM data and careful processing in JOSM
before uploading.

I'd really like to get all the water features from OS into OSM.  It's
very useful data and also makes maps prettier.  It's quite a laborious
task, though, as the data requires manual creation of multipolygons and
of course merging with any water features we already have.

I have already done a small amount here:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.6006lon=1.6362zoom=13layers=M
Although I have not joined together all gaps, just some gaps where a way
crosses it and it is obviously a conduit.

Now I have split the Vectormap square TG into smaller chunks which I
plan to process one by one and upload.  The amount of data in just this
square is quite large, but it's still probably less than half of Norfolk.

Have any large scale imports from this dataset already been done?

Do people think this is a good idea?  Any suggestions regarding the process?

(G, and now to the whole list ...)

As always, I would say use the OS data for areas you know. So when you 
say 'all water features from OS' I hope you mean in an area you know and 
not the whole of Great Britain.  It does, as you say, need work, not 
least to bridge the gaps left from the process that generated it where 
anything crosses a waterway. Sometimes these are bridges but sometimes 
they are culverts or occasionally some form or viaduct or pipework or 
even real gaps. Some of the water features no longer exist. Some are 
ditches that only occasionally have water in them. Local knowledge or a 
survey is essential to use this data in a way to improve OSM rather than 
just dumping it into OSM.


Having said that importing the detail especially for a complex waterway 
can be useful and a substantial improvement over trying to trace it and 
would be very hard to survey with a GPSr.


If you just want OSM to look like OS, you could just use OS.

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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-11 Thread Borbus
On 11/12/11 13:08, Chris Hill wrote:
 As always, I would say use the OS data for areas you know. So when
 you say 'all water features from OS' I hope you mean in an area you
 know and not the whole of Great Britain.

No I don't mean the whole of GB.  I would only do my own county.  But I
don't really know the area that intimately, I just have a broad idea of
what is going on.  The place I linked around Breydon Water is very
remote, it's just miles and miles of marshland.  Without the water it's
a big blank bit of map, which is what made me want to add the water in
the first place.

 If you just want OSM to look like OS, you could just use OS.

True.  Maybe I should instead make a rendering that uses water from OS
VectorMap and everything else from OSM.

-- 
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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-11 Thread Tim François
I've done the same as Craig: exported only the features I was interested in
using QGIS, before using JOSM to tidy it up.

I did Chew Valley Lake and the River Chew running into it from the Avon at
Keynsham.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.3356781005859lon=-2.61131286621094zoom=13

The entire process took a long, long time (we're talking many hours), as
the OS data is all fragmented and needs joining up.

(Thinking about it I think I also did the Avon from Keynsham, through Bath
and out the other side. I had a lot of spare time back then...)

Tim

On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 6:28 PM, Craig Loftus 
craigloftus+...@googlemail.com wrote:

  Have any large scale imports from this dataset already been done?

 Unfortunately some have. Orkney is particularly bad.

  Do people think this is a good idea?  Any suggestions regarding the
 process?

 I don't think area based importing is useful. Too many fragmented
 waterways, and non-existent drains get pulled in. The few imports I've
 done have focused on specific features, e.g., the banks and
 tributaries of a river in an area I was mapping. It takes a long time
 to get the sections connected together, the islands added, and all the
 waterways connected; without focusing on a specific feature it would
 be far too easy to overlook bits that needed tidying up.

 In terms of the process, I found it useful to select and export just
 the features I wanted in QGIS before extracting to OSM. And then to
 use the JOSM validator to quickly eliminate the hundreds of duplicate
 and unconnected nodes that seem to be created. Using exallpoly.py with
 riverbanks tends to result in problems and I ended up modifying it to
 not close the areas.

 Craig

 On 11 December 2011 11:26, Borbus bor...@gmail.com wrote:
  First of all, when I say import I mean a manual import: reprojection of
  OS shapefiles, conversion to OSM data and careful processing in JOSM
  before uploading.
 
  I'd really like to get all the water features from OS into OSM.  It's
  very useful data and also makes maps prettier.  It's quite a laborious
  task, though, as the data requires manual creation of multipolygons and
  of course merging with any water features we already have.
 
  I have already done a small amount here:
  http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.6006lon=1.6362zoom=13layers=M
  Although I have not joined together all gaps, just some gaps where a way
  crosses it and it is obviously a conduit.
 
  Now I have split the Vectormap square TG into smaller chunks which I
  plan to process one by one and upload.  The amount of data in just this
  square is quite large, but it's still probably less than half of Norfolk.
 
  Have any large scale imports from this dataset already been done?
 
  Do people think this is a good idea?  Any suggestions regarding the
 process?
 
  Happy mapping,
 
  Borbus.
 
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Re: [Talk-GB] OS VectorMap water feature import

2011-12-11 Thread Graham Jones
On 11 December 2011 18:46, Tim François sk1pp...@yahoo.co.uk

 The entire process took a long, long time (we're talking many hours), as
 the OS data is all fragmented and needs joining up.

 This is one where it is certainly possible to import the data, but to do
it manually is going to be a huge amount of effort, and I wonder if it is
really worth the effort?

I see the main benefit of OSM in providing 'added value' geographic data
that is not available in other freely available sources.   Last time I made
a map of an outdoor area, I found that the OS Vector Map District (VMD)
water features added a lot to it, because the OSM data was pretty plain.
In the end I actually made the map from a mixture of OSM and VMD Data, with
SRTM generated contours.
I certainly used OSM footpaths and route relations (because they are not in
any of the other data sets) - as I wanted to highlight a walking route.

I used VMD waterways because they were far more complete than OSM.
I think that for the area I was working on (Weardale) I used VMD roads too,
because there are still a lot missing from OSM.

Where I struggled was in woodland areas - you get a lot more if you use
VMD, but I also know that quite a lot have been felled, which can be
changed in OSM, but not VMD, so this was a difficult choice.   (You can see
the output 
herehttps://github.com/jones139/Mapnik-OSM-Styles/raw/master/weardale_way/image_vmd_fc.png
(but
there is something wrong with the grid on the version on that server,
sorry!and the rendering style is not as pretty as the main OSM one).

I wonder if a more productive use of our efforts would be in developing
tools to make it easier to make such merged data maps and highlight the
'value added' bits from OSM that make it stand out from a Land Ranger map?
   [Things like showing all the industrial archeology, real ale pubs etc.].

I am working (very slowly) on a tool that will pull together the required
data to produce these sort of things and render it at high resolution for
printing.It is not at the sort of state that I would publish it and
recommend that someone just tries it (no nice front end), but it is getting
there and I can make maps from it when I want to.  I would be happy to put
more effort into it if there was interest (or anyone interested in
helping!).

One final thing is that if we do say that we will not import the VMD data
into OSM, this means that it will not appear on the main OSM web site map.
  We could show off what is possible though by making a 'osm-uk' site with
a web map that combines the various data sources in a web map?

Regards


Graham.
-- 
Graham Jones
Hartlepool, UK.
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