Greeting from a new mapper

Ladies and gentlemen, meet our otai, hardcore mapper. :smiley:

Definitely! Unless you have a Significant Other whom happen to share someone’s passion of mapping during driving. :stuck_out_tongue: Hehe.

I’ve been busy drawing roads on the map… very time consuming :confused:

I wish OSM system able to identify all roads & buildings automatically so we only need to enter road names, address and etc…

It is, but there are ways to minimize it.

For hardcore road-only tracing, IMO nothing beats Potlatch 2 - auto image download, very useful node traversal feature (comp sci graph traversal algorithm anyone?:stuck_out_tongue: ). For example, you trace a long highway and at every junction that you meet, you stop and trace that side road until you meet the end. Click one key, and you are back to the beginning node where road junction meets the long highway, and you can continue tracing that highway once again. Rinse and repeat. But you need to save regularly though, sometimes something goes wonky that I have no clue why it happens.

JOSM comes next, excellent for all-around tracing which include buildings and stuff, a lot of presets, validation.

And then iD. I only use it for small jobs, usually when there is only mapbox imagery available for that specific area. I like it for its maximum zoom interpolation feature which makes the medium resolution imagery pretty recognizable. Other than that, not so much, too high a requirement for my computer to run.

That’s the same problem that I’m having when I first start signing up and contributing to OSM, about 4 years ago. Kedah map was depressingly quite empty. Especially because here in Malaysia, there’s fewer contributors (including tourists and expats). What’s worse, there’s only Bing aerial imagery is made available. Mapbox satellite comes in 2014 and now we have two more imagery layers recently. During my early OSM contributing days, GPS tracks is my friend (well, that’s the case since the inception of OSM in the UK circa 2004).

That’s history lectures aside.

If there are Strava users around your area, try the third-party tracing tool from Strava: Strava Slide. Of course, it would be interesting to read about it. Click one end, and click another end of a (previously unmapped) road, and click Slide. Hopefully that would make automated tracing easier. The downside is that Strava’s iD editor has not included (yet) the DigitalGlobe layers, which could slow down some verification and/or validation process.

Also, patiently waiting, a team from Facebook is training an AI to trace roads. Right now they’re trying to improve OSM coverage in Thailand before moving to our country.

@kucai
I’ve heard JOSM is powerful and it takes time to learn but for now the online iD-editor fulfilled my needs so I’ll stick with it first and learn JOSM later. :smiley:

@AkuAnakTimur
Thanks for sharing your experiences it really looks hard when back in time.

I feel appreciate when I open the map and thinking that every single node, way and area came from someone’s contribution previously.

Ok, I’ll get back to work on mapping. :stuck_out_tongue:

:stuck_out_tongue: Please, don’t be too hard on yourselves. Slow but steady, wins the race. I, too, appreciate every contributors here, especially those whom mapped for many, many years and counting. Quantity never matters, but it’s the quality over time. There are even expats and visitors on bicycles - and went mapping all across the country. In addition, there are some mainly doing adjustments, relying on their knowledge.

The forum is indeed intended to discuss about mapping, but not necessarily all the time. :laughing:

In my humble opinion, the iD editor gets better with time. I don’t use iD frequently, but in the news, people from Mapbox is making it more powerful. It’s totally alright to stick with familiar tools.

Yes but actually I use iD more as it didn’t need to install.Kadaz thanks for the ‘‘賭間口’’ Jalan Hang Kasturi Update but when you do road names in Melaka city better verify with locals to avoid OSM get wrong name.

@AkuAnakTimur
I just bought a pen and notebook for mapping outdoor.
Feel good back to old school holding pen & paper when we are in the era of typing on keyboard and touching screen. :smiley:

@angys
Fixed!

Thanks for reminding me. :slight_smile:

Oh, wow. I happen to map using the bookmarks feature on OsmAnd while travelling. With pen and paper, you don’t have even to worry about the battery la, also almost certain zero risk of gadget theft. Pen and paper works best in almost every situation actually, rain or shine; indoors and outdoors. Even when you are adding data to OSM, you can rotate the notes easily :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

In case of emergency, I brought along a pen; so if I have the time, I can scribble on paper receipts. :laughing:

Be careful with street names… I’ve seen street names on google which I myself have been searching for years unsuccessfully. Many important roads in Terengganu doesn’t have any names (or visible signs), but seems google already found out. :roll_eyes: I assume it is the same everywhere else.

Same case here in Kedah. Residential streets in taman perumahan, and important roads in major city/town centres have visible name signs. Beyond these areas, good luck trying for one. That includes our major federal route (e.g. federal routes 1 and 7) in rural areas.

I agree also but my opinion isthe name:zh tag should be fill with simplified Chinese not Traditional Chinese just like Jonker Streethttps://www.openstreetmap.org/way/154824619/history.

Yes mobiles help me a lots.Maybe you can use the MAPS.ME app because it only need to download little size of maps. But it’s cold is didn’t showing some areas in OSM eg highway rest area and place residential. C

Ah also hope you can clear all the FIX ME tag in Melaka City because this maybe brought bad impression to the other OSM consumer :|:|

@kuchai
Maybe google accessed / collected geologic map database from government?

I only enter those names I’m pretty sure it’s correct otherwise I’ll just leave it blank for unsure.

@AkuAnakTimur
You’re right.
I can write on paper and save battery for GPS tracking. :stuck_out_tongue:

@angys
Sorry but I insist on using traditional chinese coz the name original exists in traditional chinese so we can’t simply ignore it and change it to simplified chinese unless OSM splits chinese into simplified & traditional chinese then only we can do the translation. Otherwise, stick with the official name which is in traditional chinese for Jonker Walk.

OK that historic area we just leave it for traditional becuz it has historic value.I suggest that the name:zh roadname in UNESCO cities (George Town and Melaka City) can use both of 2 script(Trad.+Sim.).As other area like Melaka City just keep Simplyfied Chinese Character as now SJKC use it.

And the Melaka Monorail still operate? Why the station still appear on OSM and that will confuse some consumer.

Map what’s on the ground: if it’s using Traditional Chinese, then use Traditional Chinese. But there’s a way to include Simplified Chinese - try asking Singapore / Hong Kong / Taiwan OSMers around to ask for input on how to do that. Perhaps ask in OSM Help Forum - no problem directly asking in Chinese, because you might get direct answers easily.

Let me know about this, because I could update the (Malaysian) OSM Wiki regarding this matter.

Click here to enlarge - The street in question

This is in Traditional Chinese, right? So, without doubt, name:zh should be in Traditional Chinese. Also, from what I observe (areas around Kedah), old shops tend to use Traditional Chinese. But new ones might switch to Simplified.

Well, I leave the rest to you guys whether to stick with Simplified or Traditional for other places without a visible name sign.

Disclaimer: I cannot read Chinese at all, but using Google Translate and/or this tool, at least I could have a go to input name:zh values. :laughing: :laughing: Incorrect name values could probably coming from me. And I’m aware that the standard Mandarin language syllabus in Malaysia is using Simplified. Welp, that’s so complicated.

Not complicated at all.The street name retain Traditional cuz that brought historic value to the town as George Town.(One vote had decied since 2008 as the Mandarin Street Name use which type of script,as Traditional picked). I suggest both of two and the other name use simplyfied Chinese just like now Malay Language commonly uses Rumi and sometime use Jawi.If like that,Kelantan’s citiies name will be changed to Jawi?:slight_smile:

Better follow most but not least.And the Mandarin Name sometime different to another language so better verify before use it.Thank you for yours initiatives.

That I search info that Alor Setar and George Town already use Chinese Road name as Traditional and Melaka City didnt have yet but I think it should same like George Town Rule.Now Kota Kinabalu and Selangor Chinese New Village use Simplified.http://www.sinchew.com.my/node/1613018/雪州政府创举!‧村庄设双语路牌 e.g. Tg. Sepat, Batang Kali…

@AkuAnakTimur

Let’s learn some history…

  1. Long long time ago, majority of Chinese were using Traditional Chinese.
  2. People’s Republic of China (PRC) decided to abolish Traditional Chinese as Simplified Chinese could be easier for people to learn.
  3. Hong Kong and Taiwan still using Traditional Chinese.

That’s why long time ago those chinese roads & shops name were shown in Traditional Chinese but now most of us educated in Simplified Chinese coz of the influence of PRC policy.

Yes, it’s in Traditional Chinese in the picture you posted. :stuck_out_tongue:

@angys
I’m not sure the monorail is still operating or not but the infrastructure is still there maybe you can check it next time when you come over. :laughing:

I see. Ok, at least I tembak Hong Kong is using Traditional Chinese is correct . Many thanks for your sharing.

I’m not sure about Alor Setar’s Pekan Cina case. Probably sign name in Traditional Chinese was suggested to the Majlis Bandaraya.

Terengganu only. Place name and street names (if I recall correctly) has both in the Latin (rumi) and Arabic script (jawi).

Kelantan place names are strictly using the Latin script, but street signs and shops have both. Chinese shops may have both, with Chinese name.

The Latin (rumi) script goes into the name=* value. Because it’s written prominently (the biggest). The Arabic script (jawi) would be written smaller, and if I were tagging this, I would put in separate key-value pair. So far, I haven’t checked yet what is the standard tag.

Some renderer (or apps) would have trouble displaying both scripts at the same time, so I avoid putting both like this e.g. name=Kuala Terengganu كوالا ترڠڬانو. Well, OSM asks us to put names as you would see on the sign. So jawi has special tag, and if someone has the time, s/he can make a special OSM website to display that too.