Wish: Adding Buildings Features

Hello! Congrats on the release. Was wondering what your plan was for adding other OSM features such as building types? Seems to be many of them! And it seems you already bring the points in. Buildings do not seem to be a big population on OSM, but I can imagine as time goes by more and more will be popping up. Would be great to have em!

Best,

Luis

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Timothy Logan on January 17, 2012 at 10:21pm

Thanks. I'm open to adding more OSM features if people are interested. When I originally wrote it I just wanted the roads and started adding more just because I could, though with the number of possible OSM features it could quickly get out of control so I tried kept it fairly simple. I didn't bother with the buildings in particular because the places I looked when initially writing this had very few buildings but maybe there will be more in the future.

Just a quick look at it seems like it would be pretty simple to implement. Do you think there's any reason to separate out the different building types like with the roads or just output them all out of the same node?

-Tim

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on January 18, 2012 at 1:07am

Hello Tim,

When I looked at the building features last night it was a bit overwhelming how many different types there were. It seems OSM features are an open battleground for discrepancies and categorization. That being said, I would hate to loose out on some information along the way. There could be an application where you would only need the buildings, no special categorization. In other cases you would want to know where sports facilities are, where are religious centers, etc. Maybe there is a level of categorization that they have not implemented yet which divides building types as the roads are divided. Maybe by function or general purpose (civic, private, public). Not sure on this one...

I was going to look at the features once again, but I think OSM might be blacked out due to SOPA?

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on January 23, 2012 at 2:00am

If I may add another wish... Natural Features. Especially looking for things like coastlines.

Here's a thought. What about a generic features component? Is it possible to have a component where you input the data such as the OSM path, the PTs, and the IDs, as well as the Key (i.e. Natural) and the Value (i.e. Coastline). This way we can just request the data that is necessary, and you do not have to try and keep up with the growing features list.

Thoughts?

Luis

Permalink Reply by Timothy Logan on January 23, 2012 at 8:14am

That's a great idea. Should be simple enough to implement so I'll take a look at getting an update ready soon.

-Tim

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on January 24, 2012 at 2:51am

-oops, forgot Coastlines were included in the Waterways component! In any case, looking forward to the evolution of this great tool!

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