Hello, While we're on the subject of OSM usability: I have a different issue/question/problem regarding the access to the OSM data.
While I find OSM web maps to be quite usable and all, I think the biggest strength of OSM (apart from its community, of course :) ) is having an access to the raw (vector) map data and not just image tiles like Google et al. For a long time I was dreaming about creating a desktop/mobile application for cyclists and hikers which would utilize the vector data for suggesting cycling/hiking routes, calculating the time needed and so on. The map area would not necessarily be a large one. The problem is fetching the data - the only viable option I see is using OSMXAPI, but its server is overwhelmed and will limit the download size in the future (from what I read on this list). Using planet dumps seems to me a bit too unfriendly from the end-user perspective - they would have to download quite a large quantity of data. I have the similar problem with providing map data to users of Kosmos. Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. Best regards, Igor _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
