Roadmap / strategic discussion

[matthijsmelissen]

With the road update rolled out, a large part of the style sheet has now been modified since the stylesheet development has been taken up by the current tram. Roads, buildings, landuse colours, and icons have all been changed to a greater or lesser extent.

I think that makes it time again to have a look at the bigger picture.

What should development concentrate on over the next year or so? What are the issues that need improving most at this point?

This discussion should lead to an update of the roadmap in README.md.

CC @gravitystorm @pnorman @matkoniecz.

[kocio-pl]

Reopening this ticket, since it looks like I'm able to express my visions at last and some people might be interested in changing documentation to reflect different state of the style.

The first of my articles on the subject is about dealing with a lot of data in big cities and how it relates to rendering outdoor (I hope I will write more of them):

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/kocio/diary/44769

[Tomasz-W]

Some of my thoughts:

• We should stop pretending that osm-carto is just "one of hundreds of OSM styles" and admit that it's the most popular style, what makes it a big "trendsetter" for some mapping behaviours (eg. people are tagging footway areas as combination of highway=footway +area=yes, because it's rendered on osm-carto, even if in opinion of many this scheme is incorrect and area:highway=* is easier to use)
• Main attribute of osm-carto is its richness, there are many of elements which are not present on other maps, I think we should keep this direction and consequently add things that may be useful for map users but won't clutter the map
• Low zoom levels are highly abandoned, I would like to see landcover there, as it happens on mid-zooms
• Violet borders are the thing, which makes our map a little bit crappy, there was an idea to change its colour to grey/ dark-green, but it vanished unfortunately
• Highway colours are better than they was a few years ago, but as it is OpenStreetMap, I think they should be more prominent and bright as it is in other styles/ maps

[polarbearing]

highway=footway +area=yes, because it's rendered on osm-carto, even if in opinion of many this scheme is incorrect and area:highway=* is easier to use

Disagree, it is semantically different, we had discussed that before.

[Tomasz-W]

@polarbearing You seem to confuse you private opinion with output of discussion (which still wasn't established in https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/3342)

[kocio-pl]

We should stop pretending that osm-carto is just "one of hundreds of OSM styles" and admit that it's the most popular style, what makes it a big "trendsetter" for some mapping behaviours

I would like to see some hard data showing it some day, but my gut feeling is that some big tag transitions is simply impossible without OSM Carto adopting it. I agree that this is pretending and it has bad consequences.

Main attribute of osm-carto is its richness, there are many of elements which are not present on other maps, I think we should keep this direction and consequently add things that may be useful for map users but won't clutter the map

That's also what I think. It would be good to have some easy to modify vector styles to show flexibility and richness, but it's not yet clear to me when it might happen, and even then raster map will still be needed at least for some time.

Low zoom levels are highly abandoned, I would like to see landcover there, as it happens on mid-zooms Violet borders are the thing, which makes our map a little bit crappy, there was an idea to change its colour to grey/ dark-green, but it vanished unfortunately

I plan to propose and test landcover/natural on low zoom soon. However that's an easy part, adding rivers on low zoom (requires special tagging) or changing border colors seems to be much harder.

Highway colours are better than they was a few years ago, but as it is OpenStreetMap, I think they should be more prominent and bright as it is in other styles/ maps

I think that the name of project is misleading today - "open" is still true, but "map" just shows typical usage and "street" is also another typical usage (routing). OpenGeoData would be closer to reality (and this domain is still used by OSM!).

But I have nothing against tuning road colors. There are more people claiming that they are interested, but just no one tries it. Only @imagico fork made it lately in some limited way: http://blog.imagico.de/more-new-colors/

[kocio-pl]

Here is my second article about map designing principles - this time it's about the size:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/kocio/diary/44852

[kocio-pl]

I think this is the right place to discuss problems from https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/2436#issuecomment-450694928. All the questions from https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/2436#issuecomment-450696706 are also what I'd like to ask, but I would also like to know:

If I were taking up a style based on osm-carto and sticking close to what I see as the original vision

What do you consider original vision? I don't know the original vision before OSM Carto, but I think that original vision was just to port XML into Carto CSS avoiding adding anything.

[kocio-pl]

Interesting comment on wiki from iD developer @bhousel, which will definitely have some impact on OSM ecosystem, since it's highly popular editor:

And on “the wiki”, I have basically given up on the OSM wiki because it contains so much wrong information and opinion, and I’m tired of having my edits reverted. I just recently had another issue where we added a traffic signal tag that was already used, and then someone edited the wiki to rant about how iD is wrong and for people to not use the tag. Where before, I thought the wiki was “not perfect”, now I’m of the opinion that it’s actively harming OpenStreetMap. I encourage everyone to just disregard everything that’s on the wiki and go by what taginfo says as far as how the tags are used and what the accepted values are. If something is “not documented on the wiki” that means nothing because the wiki is not documentation.

https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2019-January/041906.html

[dieterdreist]

frankly I am not astonished he got some of his edits reverted, he has a record of insisting on unilateral decisions, e.g. introducing formerly unused and undocumented tags via iD presets even where competing tags were already established. The bigger problem are things that don’t find general consensus but happen to slip through without someone noticing.

[Adamant36]

@dieterdreist, kind of like the car: and motorcycle: tags that being pushed hard by Rtfm on the wiki and with retagging despite opposition to both of them. I noticed you gave him feedback a while ago his car: proposal that he ignored.

I partly agree with bhousel about the wiki being worthless since Rtfm hasn't been stopped in his tracks since then. I know some things will slip through the tracks, but I feel like the wiki has to be very accurate when it comes to what tag is prefered and the tags definitions, or else its pretty much worthless. Especially when it comes to the really important tags. Someone definently shouldnt be able to insert their own tag into the pages of established ones as if it over rides them without someone intervining. or else whats the point in the wiki and tag status?

Anyway, at least its being disscussed I guess. I imagine it would probably be hard for projects like this and iD editor to function without an agreed on and clear longterm tagging foundation in place. Which probably takes the wiki being consistant and reliable. So hopefully it will get worked out.

[dieterdreist]

sent from a phone

On 8. Jan 2019, at 15:37, Adamant36 notifications@github.com wrote:

I partly agree with bhousel about the wiki being worthless since Rtfm hasn't been stopped in his tracks since then.

Rtfm‘s edits and proceedings are currently discussed and eventually reverted. bhousel has a record of acting similarly with regard to (not) discussing things with the community and (not) accepting community decisions, just that he has more power because he controls the iD presets.

[pnorman]

Let's please stay on topic,, which bad-mouthing maintainers of other projects is not.

The Wiki has never been a source of truth for us. We've used it to greater and lesser degrees depending on how useful it is, but it's frequently not.

[jeisenbe]

I would like to start talking about the planned direction of this style again, mainly regarding cartography and goals. However, I'm not sure if it's best to do it in this issue, where most of the comments are from Nov 2015 to Nov 2016, and much of the discussion was around limitations in the current tools (Mapnik, Carto, Osm2pgsql and PostGIS).

What I would like to discuss:

1) What zoom levels need work? What do we need to improve those levels?

• Eg, to get proper landcover, boundary and water body rendering at low zoom levels we need generalized, simplified or preprocessed data

2) What major changes to cartography would we like to work toward?

• Eg water polygons, administrative boundary colors, road colors change, low zoom landcover

3) What are some technical issues that need improving, so that compiling time and performance does not continue to suffer?

[matthijsmelissen]

Feel free to open a new issue, but I think it is important to stated the goals (definition of done) in the opening message. For example: 'this ticket should lead to a list of agreed on cartographic goals for 2019' or 'this ticket should lead to a modification in CARTOGRAPHY.txt'.

[pnorman]

However, I'm not sure if it's best to do it in this issue, where most of the comments are from Nov 2015 to Nov 2016

A new issue would be best - a lot of the comments here are no longer relevant.