state of the map 2008: open content printed travel guidebooks using openstreetmap
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Open content printed travel guidebooks using OpenStreetMap
Jani Patokallio
Overview
What's Wikitravel?
A Brief History of Mapping on Wikitravel
Integrating Wikitravel and OSM
Future plans
Website
"Wikipedia meets Lonely Planet"
Launched in July 2003
Almost 50,000 articles in 20 languages
~19,000 in English version alone
10,000+ edits/week
Webby Award for Travel in 2007
Printed guides and
Wikitravel Press
Addresses an obvious need
Internet is good, but sometimes paper is better
Current guides are 3-10 years out of date
A design goal since day one
Long, comprehensive articles > short stubs
"Can you sleep?" test for creating a page
The key: Print on demand
Book is printed after you order
Information in the guide is up-to-date
Flow betweenwebsite andbook:
1) Edit guide2) Publish guide3) Deliver guide4) Read guide5) Edit guide...
State of the Map, 2003
Virtually no usable open map data when Wikitravel was founded in 2003
OpenStreetMap?
Didn't exist
Wikipedia?
Maps vary wildly in appearance and licensing
Only rarely street-level
So we had to roll our own...
The First Map: Montreal, 2003
Mapping with DEMIS
DEMIS Web Map Server (demis.nl)
Semi-commercial software, free web demo
Generates nicely shaded maps of any spot on the planet
Output is GIF only
No street data
Minimal, often faulty city, road, rail data
License is almost-but-not-quite PD
Usable "region" maps with a little work
DEMIS:
Iriomote, Japan
Mapmaking Expedition
Standardize appearance
Listing icons
Document mapmaking process
Trace over satellite imagery
SVG format, so relatively easy to edit
Homemade: Helsinki, Finland
But nevertheless...
Intimidating barrier of entry
A number of prospective editors for WTP guides screamed and ran for the door
Time-consuming to create
More time spent drawing than editing
Painful to maintain
Bars and restaurants go bust, hotels change name
No link between guide data and map
OpenStreetMap to the rescue!
Vast treasure trove of detailed, CC-licensed map data
World map is improving continually
Web interface and tools being developed
Output can be customized by editing XML "style sheet"
How does Wikitravel fit into all this?
OSM v1:
Helsinki, Finland
Step 1:
Listings in OSM
Listings (attractions, restaurants, nightspots, hotels and whatnot) added as nodes to OSM
Verify that names are identical
either name or name:en used to match
The beauty of it:
No Wikitravel-specific tags needed for OSM
No geodata needed in Wikitravel itself
Step 2:
Export and merge
Wikitravel listings are also XML
Great
place!
Mashing the two together just requires a little XSLT magic
End result:
OSM data dump with Wikitravel-listed nodes changed to use icons and the rest removed
Dump of matched and unmatched listings
Step 3:
Generate SVG
SVG output customized for printability
Large fonts
Contrasty colors (even in grayscale)
Unnecessary stuff removed
Main file has the map and icons
Second file has an automatically generated key to the listings
Put them together and you get...
OSM v2:
Helsinki, Finland
Problems (1/2)
OSM not very friendly for adding listings
Current: Need to add "nodes", "tags" etc
Wanted: Drag-and-drop little restaurant, bar, hotel etc icons into the map
Ideal: Drag-and-drop from Wikitravel page into the map (so name etc are automatic)
Matching can be a little hit-or-miss
If two places have exactly the same name, Wikitravel can't tell them apart
Solution: Add OSM IDs to Wikitravel?
Problems (2/2)
Osmarender SVGs and Inkscape
Can edit and export, but corrupts when saved
No Recent changes
Who changed what and why?
Example: We added boundaries for Paris arrondissements, but they were removed
After lots of detective work, it turned out that boundaries should be done as relations...
Future plans
User-friendly icons into Potlatch
A slippy map server for Wikitravel
Sights, restaurants, hotels etc as layers that can be turned on and off
...
Thank you
http://wikitravelpress.com