LWN: Comments on "Fun with free maps on the free desktop"

Routing

jku — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 08:55:48 +0000

Just like open source software, open data gives you a lot more room to do things you didn't expect you'd want to do when you originally started with the software/service/data.

Gerv already mentioned printing flyers. Maybe you'd also like to access your maps offline? Or use another visual layout that better suits your specific use case? The examples are not that hard to find...

Of course you can keep using Google Maps and only change when you realise you do need to do something the Google license prohibits. I'm lazy and not really interested in reading licenses so I've gone with OSM -- with CC-BY-SA I at least have a possibility of understanding what is legal and what is not.

Fun with free maps on the free desktop

Marblehead — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:30:28 +0000

I forgot to mention: If your distribution has properly packaged Marble
then it also comes with support for GPS (and .gpx files). GPS support is
either provided via gpsd or GeoClue.

Fun with free maps on the free desktop

Marblehead — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:56:43 +0000

Hi,

Marble recently got support for routing. Dennis Nienhüser has written a
nice blog about Marble's new routing feature:

http://nienhueser.de/blog/?p=48

See the video here:

http://vimeo.com/10267838

The feature is still in development and we'll try to simplify the UI a bit
more and extend on functionality.

If you are a student and want to participate in Google Summer of Code 2010
then you might want to apply for a Marble project. See Dennis' blog above
for details.

There are a lot of opportunities to help us to improve Marble with any
skill level: And we'd love to improve Marble so that it covers more use
cases and more ideas. All provided that it stays easy to use and looks
good :-)

Marble has got a pretty sound code base with a sophisticated graphics
pipeline that makes it e.g. possible to deal with several projections.
Also Marble's functionality is plugin based. Together with the
availability of KML-inspired tool classes it's possible to easily enhance
functionality.

Join us! Join Marble:
http://edu.kde.org/marble/getinvolved.php

Torsten

Routing

cry_regarder — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:10:03 +0000

There is also navit which does routing on the desktop with OSM. I successfully used navit on a freerunner using OSM to navigate around Tallin, Estonia. It even had Hell Hunt loaded as a POI.

Cry

Routing

gerv — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:55:41 +0000

Because you can't fix it when it's wrong, there are many things you can't legally use the maps for (e.g. printing on a flyer), you or others can't customize the rendering (e.g. to create a cycle map or a public transport map) and the level of detail, in many urban areas, is now way worse in Google than in OSM. Look at London for example.

http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=mapnik&mt1=googlema...

Gerv

Routing

epa — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:36:45 +0000

That said, I remember 'Autoroute Express' running on a PC with four megs of RAM in 1991, and it wasn't too big or slow (it could be installed from a handful of floppies for the UK and Ireland map). So if there were some way to condense down the OSM data to major routes only, it would be practical to include a desktop route planner program in Linux distributions.

Routing

epa — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:00:11 +0000

There's nothing wrong with using Google Maps, or an iPod, or Microsoft Excel, but since this is Linux Weekly News we tend to discuss projects using free software and free data.

Fun with free maps on the free desktop

dnewcomb — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:38:02 +0000

Qgis, http://qgis.org, has a plugin for downloading-editing-uploading OpenStreetMap data, as well as plugins for GPS tracking/data. Qgis is a more a full-featured GIS than just a map viewer.

Routing

roberton — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:42:53 +0000

[Dons flame-proof underpants]

What is wrong with using web-based mapping which doesn't use OSM (or "free" data). In other words, enlighten me why I should feel bad using Google Maps :-)

Roberto/.

Using GPS tracks, routes or waypoints

till — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:05:37 +0000

Two other applications that are especially useful if one wants to look at GPS tracks, routes or waypoints are Viking and QLandkarteGT:

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/viking/index.php?ti...
http://www.qlandkarte.org/

Routing

epa — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:26:04 +0000

There are certainly many websites which do routing from OSM data, such as OpenRouteService, CloudMade Maps, and the free software Routino. However you do need a lot of disk space to store data for the whole planet, or even just one country (the Routino demo site is for Britain and Ireland only). The OSM 'planet file' data dump is currently eight gigabytes, compressed. Then you have to load it into some kind of database and index it for routing calculations. So until bandwidth and disk space improve to the point where Linux distributions can include a set of geodata as part of the default installation, perhaps routing is best done as a web service.