No bug-report address for OSM packge

No bug-report address for OSM packge

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I recently started using OSM, and I like it -- but I have a suggestion
to make: a list of transliterations into the Roman alphabet, so we can
recognize names in countries that use other scripts.  (This would not
be trivial to implement, I think.)

But I can't see where to mail this.  Its README.org file does not give
any email address.

Shouldn't every GNU ELPA package have an email address for sending
bug reports and suggestions?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: No bug-report address for OSM packge

[Protesilaos Stavrou]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Date: Thu, 05 May 2022 14:38:11 -0400
>
> I recently started using OSM, and I like it -- but I have a suggestion
> to make: a list of transliterations into the Roman alphabet, so we can
> recognize names in countries that use other scripts.  (This would not
> be trivial to implement, I think.)
>
> But I can't see where to mail this.  Its README.org file does not give
> any email address.
>
> Shouldn't every GNU ELPA package have an email address for sending
> bug reports and suggestions?

This is from osm.el:

    ;; Author: Daniel Mendler <mail@daniel-mendler.de>

On my Emacs build (Emacs 29), M-x describe-package also returns this
information.

-- 
Protesilaos Stavrou
https://protesilaos.com

Re: No bug-report address for OSM packge

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > On my Emacs build (Emacs 29), M-x describe-package also returns this
  > information.

Thanks.

Should the README file have this address too?
-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: No bug-report address for OSM packge

[Stefan Monnier]

> Should the README file have this address too?

It's better not to duplicate that kind of info: it's hard enough to make
sure it's kept up-to-date when it's at a single place.


        Stefan

Re: No bug-report address for OSM packge

[Daniel Mendler]

>> I recently started using OSM, and I like it -- but I have a suggestion
>> to make: a list of transliterations into the Roman alphabet, so we can
>> recognize names in countries that use other scripts.  (This would not
>> be trivial to implement, I think.
> What do you think of my transliteration idea?

Transliterations are indeed an important usability feature. There are
two places where we may want transliterated names:

1. The search currently returns the results in the language of the
locations which have been found. For now I added the customization
option `osm-search-language` which can be set to a language code. The
geolocation server then returns the results in the given language.

2. The labels in the default international "Mapnik" map are displayed in
the language of the region. Osm.el comes with multiple preconfigured map
servers which render the map in different ways. For example the
"Mapnik(de)" server renders the labels in both Latin script and the
local language. You can select a different map server by clicking on the
"Mapnik" button in the header-line. As an alternative, the completion
command `osm-server` is bound to the key `v`.

Is this helpful? Do you have other places in mind where we would like
transliteration?

Daniel

Re: No bug-report address for OSM packge

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > 1. The search currently returns the results in the language of the
  > locations which have been found.

I can see various possible meanings for that.
Do you mean, it returns each result in that result's own language?
Or something else?

  > Osm.el comes with multiple preconfigured map
  > servers which render the map in different ways.

Could you explain what "server" means here?  Are you talking about web
servers that Emacs contacts across the internet?  If not, that, then
what sort of thing are they?

  >  For example the
  > "Mapnik(de)" server renders the labels in both Latin script and the
  > local language.

That sounds like what I want.  Does the use of this require an
internet connection?  Or is it software and data loaded locally
so it could be used without an internet connection?

Is this documented in the package documentation?




-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: No bug-report address for OSM packge

[Daniel Mendler]

On 5/8/22 01:08, Richard Stallman wrote:
>   > 1. The search currently returns the results in the language of the
>   > locations which have been found.
> 
> I can see various possible meanings for that.
> Do you mean, it returns each result in that result's own language?

Yes, this is what I meant. But I've changed it. In the newest version,
the results are returned in the language specified by the variable
`osm-search-language'. If you set this variable to the empty string,
then each result is returned "in that result's own language".

>   > Osm.el comes with multiple preconfigured map
>   > servers which render the map in different ways.
> 
> Could you explain what "server" means here?  Are you talking about web
> servers that Emacs contacts across the internet?  If not, that, then
> what sort of thing are they?

Yes, the map tiles are provided by a specialized web server. An example
tile lives at the URL: https://tile.openstreetmap.org/7/63/42.png

You can take a look at the wiki of available tile servers:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_servers

osm.el comes with a list of preconfigured tile servers, which are all
free to use (funded by donations) and based on free software. You can
chose one of them by clicking on the button in the header-line.

>   >  For example the
>   > "Mapnik(de)" server renders the labels in both Latin script and the
>   > local language.
> 
> That sounds like what I want.  Does the use of this require an
> internet connection?  Or is it software and data loaded locally
> so it could be used without an internet connection?

Yes, this requires an internet connection. Setting up the map rendering
and map data base server locally is a major undertaking. I don't
recommend it if you are not already intrinsically interested in the
OpenStreetMap project itself, e.g., if you are a OpenStreetMap server
administrator or developer of the free server software. As of today, the
current full OpenStreetMap data dump in the form of an XML file has a
size of 115GB. If you decompress this file it blows up to about 1.5TB.

> Is this documented in the package documentation?

The use of the internet is documented implicitly in the README, but one
could be more explicit about it. I see the words "fetches", "tile
servers" and "curl" in the README.

Daniel

Re: No bug-report address for OSM packge

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > Should the README file have this address too?

  > It's better not to duplicate that kind of info: it's hard enough to make
  > sure it's kept up-to-date when it's at a single place.

Commands could get it from the README file and show it to the user.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: No bug-report address for OSM packge

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Yes, this requires an internet connection. Setting up the map rendering
  > and map data base server locally is a major undertaking. I don't
  > recommend it if you are not already intrinsically interested in the
  > OpenStreetMap project itself, e.g., if you are a OpenStreetMap server
  > administrator or developer of the free server software. As of today, the
  > current full OpenStreetMap data dump in the form of an XML file has a
  > size of 115GB. If you decompress this file it blows up to about 1.5TB.

Indeed, that would be big.

I have an idea.  If you set up a division of the world into zones, the
user could specify a zone to search within.  The amount of data needed
for one zone could be practical.  If there are 20 zones roughly equal,
one zone decompressed would be around 75GB, less than a local copy of
English Wikipedia.  I carry that with me.

It would be smaller if it used a more compressed format.

I think this is not quite on the topic or emacs-devel.
Where is the best place to discuss this?


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: No bug-report address for OSM packge

[Daniel Mendler]

On 5/9/22 01:39, Richard Stallman wrote:
> I have an idea.  If you set up a division of the world into zones, the
> user could specify a zone to search within.  The amount of data needed
> for one zone could be practical.  If there are 20 zones roughly equal,
> one zone decompressed would be around 75GB, less than a local copy of
> English Wikipedia.  I carry that with me.
> 
> It would be smaller if it used a more compressed format.

This is indeed possible. OpenStreetMap offers such partial database
dumps for regions. The main difficulty is to set up the map tile
renderer and the geolocation database. I cannot tell you how difficult
it is to do that these days. Maybe the OpenStreetMap project or the
developers of the map servers have some ready made installation and
configuration scripts available, which facilitate the process? However I
expect that it will still require some manual intervention.

> I think this is not quite on the topic or emacs-devel.
> Where is the best place to discuss this?

One could ask on one of the OpenStreetMap mailing lists:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mailing_lists

The dev, tile-serving and talk mailing lists seem most appropriate.

Daniel