OpenStreetMap is great, but...

Posted Mar 26, 2019 21:02 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (guest, #24648)
In reply to: OpenStreetMap and Deborah Nicholson win 2018 FSF Awards by eru
Parent article: OpenStreetMap and Deborah Nicholson win 2018 FSF Awards

While I agree that OSM is a good example of collaboration, I wish it would use actual highway and interstate shield logos instead of those plain rectangular boxes with "US-40" or "I-75", etc.

These logos are not protected by copyright¹, so why not use them? It makes identifying highways a lot easier.

¹ At least in the United States. I don't know what kind of copyright protection exists for highway markers in other countries.

OpenStreetMap is great, but...

Posted Mar 26, 2019 21:05 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (9 responses)

OSMAnd uses proper shields for I- and US- routes. State shields aren't always correct though. But it would be nice if they were in the original data source.

OpenStreetMap is great, but...

Posted Mar 27, 2019 7:15 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (8 responses)

Does any other country than U.S use these shield logos around road numbers in maps? In any case it is a country-specific way to render some of the map data, so it does not make sense to put the shields into the source data format, which is meant to be applicable internationally. Clients are the proper place for such custom rendering.

OpenStreetMap is great, but...

Posted Mar 27, 2019 8:05 UTC (Wed) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, several South American countries (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Perú) use identical shield logos (or nearly so) to those of the USA's (non-interstate) highways. Ecuador uses red and blue shields similar to the USA's interstate logos.

Google maps appears to use actual logos in representing highways; check out Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, or South Africa, for example.

OpenStreetMap is great, but...

Posted Mar 27, 2019 8:13 UTC (Wed) by jem (subscriber, #24231) [Link]

When you use Google Maps what you use is a client. Unless you are a Google employee in the right department you don't the original data source.

OpenStreetMap is great, but...

Posted Mar 27, 2019 10:28 UTC (Wed) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (1 responses)

Don't you want the map to render shields and other markings according to the country they belong to, not the locale of the client? If I was a visitor to the USA I think I'd want the map shields to match what I was seeing on the road, regardless of my own country's practices.

OpenStreetMap is great, but...

Posted Mar 27, 2019 11:33 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

The map application obviously knows which country the road is in, so it can render them appropriately, as long as the required rules and graphics have been programmed into it.

OpenStreetMap is great, but...

Posted Mar 27, 2019 10:41 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (3 responses)

British printed maps don't have the fancy shield logos, because British road signs don't have fancy shield logos.

British road signs and printed maps both use colour-differentiated boxes for numbers on motorways (blue with white numbers) and trunk roads (green with yellow numbers). Google Maps honours this practice for motorways at all zooms, and zoom-dependently honours it for trunk roads (zoom out and you get green boxes oriented to the X/Y axes of the map, zoom in and you get inline numbering along the road).

It doesn't honour British print map conventions on colouring the roads themselves, though. (If it did, motorways would be blue and trunk roads green.)

OpenStreetMap is great, but...

Posted Mar 27, 2019 20:19 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

Note that the UK convention is also that main (A) roads are red, and minor (B) roads are brown. What quite the difference between a trunk and a main road (both being designated A class) is I'm not sure ...

Cheers,
Wol

OpenStreetMap is great, but...

Posted Mar 27, 2019 20:53 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

A trunk road is one that Parliament or a relevant government agency have declared to be a trunk road and thus to have its maintenance paid for out of the Exchequer instead of by the county council.

Other than that, there is no reliable distinction. There are non-dualled trunk roads (like most of the A82) and dualled non-trunk A roads (the A2031 in Worthing is the one I can trivially name off the top of my head).

OpenStreetMap is great, but...

Posted Mar 27, 2019 20:54 UTC (Wed) by TomH (subscriber, #56149) [Link]

Well firstly most things that people think are trunk roads (ie maintained by central government) aren't any more as they were detrunked so that local highway authorities had to maintain them.

The highway=trunk tag in OSM does not actually correspond to such roads - the name is basically the result of confusion back when tagging first started. Rather it corresponds to A roads that are designated as part of the Prinary Route Network which you can recognise by the fact that they have green signs.

Other A roads, which have white signs, are tagged as highway=primary while B roads are highway=secondary.