OpenStreetMap from inside

Hi,
I am OSM beginner. I have question: application for smartfon, for example: OsmAnd and others get data from server. What address is this server? What format is this data - OSM has XML main data, but data for downloading is in XML or binary format?
How can do this: downloading OSM data and display it on PC?

About your questions I really can recommend to browse the OSM wiki intensively:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_XML
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/PBF_Format
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Rendering … to name but a few.

Osmand’s offline map files come from an own Osmand server … there are scripts that load raw OSM data and convert it to Osmand map format.

See Osmand’s sourcecode if you need details … or see http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mapsforge

Interesting application Mapsforge/AdvancedMapViewer but at start is only directory browsing and I can’t choose file. I don’t know which name and extension is needed, only empty directories I see.

This application requires .map file. Is described how to convert pbf to map, but this not works. Is any server with .map files?

1.In .dbf file is field OSM_ID, how relate it to .shp file?
2. When map is rendered, in small scale most objects are hidden. Objects are visibility scale range?

The mapstyle of osm.org is defined https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto

a tiny fragment:


 [amenity = 'bus_stop']::amenity,
  [highway = 'bus_stop']::highway {
    [zoom >= 16] {
      point-file: url('symbols/bus_stop_small.png');
      point-placement: interior;
    }
    [zoom >= 17] {
      point-file: url('symbols/bus_stop.p.12.png');
    }
  }

with the zoom lines, one can define what appears at each zoom level and how.