Thread: [SailfishOS] [Announce] Native offline maps: OSM Scout Server
View Single Post
rinigus is offline rinigus
2016-12-02 , 22:06
Posts: 1,414 | Thanked: 7,547 times | Joined on Aug 2016 @ Estonia
#45
Originally Posted by MartinK View Post
A significant usability issue is also IMHO the constantly changing data format - if it was more stable there could be data repositories users could use instead of having to generate their own data packs. It might be even possible to download the data directly from the GUI (from the OSM Scout Server UI or via clients).

I might be even able to arrange something with the Masaryk University NLP lab which is already kindly hosting the 100+ GB of Monav offline routing data modRana can make use of (currently mainly on the N900).

But at the moment people might even have to re-generate their data files even due to am OSM Scout Server updates due to using a newer version of libosmscout.

Does it look like there might also be a solution for this issue ? I understand designing and supporting an unchanging binary data format is no easy task for libosmscout developers.

But at the same time I'm afraid the current unstable-data format can block many users from using OSM Scout Server & client apps - especially less advanced users who could make use of pre-generated map data.
The last time we had to regenerate the maps was due to the bug in map importer. As far as I remember, the format stayed the same - just data was imported wrongly. This bug was exposed during testing of the routing and I suspect that there maybe more bugs to come. Eventually, it will stabilize, we just have to accept some fluidity at this time.

To offset the map format changes I worked on the importers. Hopefully, it would be of help for users.

Its great that you have such a host - it could really become handy. Note that the maps do have to be regenerated relatively frequently. I presume that once a month should be a target. And then we would have to see how to split the maps - countries, regions, ... Maybe you should get in touch with Lukas. He was working on getting maps distributed via downloads and he may be interested in expanding on that part of the project.

But the supply of the maps to the users is, indeed, a major problem that we would have to resolve.
 

The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to rinigus For This Useful Post: