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2. What advantages will these latest maps have over OAM ones, particularly if you collaborate in unifying tag mapping etc.?

For me, I see the advantage that LoMap will have over OAM is they will include different tags, e.g. designation (PROW at last!), building=cathedral, horse, and (to be checked, but hopefully) a carry over of the combined network names when they follow the same sections of ways.

Point 13
I have also noticed that LoMaps draws the coastline differently, sometimes pruning parts of the land off. Perhaps LoMap coastline is using some method similar to residential landuse?

The result seems less accurate.

See attached example, bottom is OSM, left is OAM, right is LoMap.

Point 12
Since my theme for v4 is currently targeting OAM I am naturally comparing how OAM abd LoMap v4 maps differ.

I've just remembered that landuse for residential areas is very different in Lomaps, which provides "lm_landuse". This tag uses its own method to establish residential areas, but this results in rather approximate areas, see attached which compares building up residential area using various landuse values (RED) in OAM vs using lm_landuse in LoMap (BLUE).

Can we have the missing landuse=residential tag value?

Point 11
I'm missing a lot of tidal mud areas around some of the British coastline, see attached comparison of OAM vs LoMap v4.

OAM have mapped natural=mud + tidal=yes to be treated the same as wetland=tidalflat.

Can something be done to include mud+tidal in LoMap v4 maps? E.g. treat as wetland=tidalflat, or include natural=mud + tidal=yes...

@karlchick
Point 4
- the LoMaps V3 was generated as 512x512 tiles and zoom or area is really "shifted" in comparison of 256x256 V4 tiles. There were minor changes in `zoom-appear` attribute for some elements. But it was mainly for zoom-levels 9 - 10 (I think). Do you have some specific requests to change the zoom-appear for certain elements?

Point 7, re:Point 4
In OAM most of the natural land features (that can cover large areas) appear from zoom level 12, but in LoMap v4 these are appearing at later zoom levels:

From Z13: beach, cliff, desert, fell, heath, marsh, scree, shingle, valley

From Z14: barerock, earthbank, grassland, sand, rock, wetland

Can these appear from Z12? In fact OAM has sand appear from Z10.

At the moment the map goes very bare when zooming out from Z13/Z14 compared to OAM, see attached.



...and few more requests...

Point 8
Can we include "surface" tag for "highway" and "natural" elements?
I think only tracktype is included, but often only "surface" is set in osm. Being able to differentiate sealed surfaces is very useful to many map users (e.g. using pushchairs, cycles, wheelchairs).


Point 9
Is it possible to include 10m contours? And make contours appear earlier too? E.g. major from Z9, medium from Z10,  minor from Z12.  See attached for comparison of LoMap v4 with OAM at Z12.


Point 10
Can we have "peak_dist" available, this allows the theme to bring peaks into view in sensible order and avoid cluttered view, also to have text size varying based on peaks significance, see attached example, note how LoMap v4 map has all peaks same size font. Note that peak_dist values need to override the default peak appear zoom levels to introduce peaks gradually from Z9 to Z12, see OAM tagmapping file as an example.

Since the new releases of Locus Map 4.15.1 and Locus Classic 3.66.1, both editions are now text wrapping "long" names.

For really long names this is good, but the algorithm is going g a poor job of wrapping also not very long names. Also the wrapping seems to be left justified, and the placement of symbols "below" are not to the bottom/right.

Seems to be only v4 maps affected.

In the past this would occur rare and then stop, e.g. if change maps or restart. But, I've tried restarting and it seems be permanent now.

Attached is an example.

Worst is the Nottingham Hill. Having a single character word wrapped also looks bad.

Can the text wrapping be made a setting? Or improved to of wrap on non-alpha chars?

@voldapet

Thank you for raising the PR.

Regarding: Point 5

John's JohnThorn maps are raster maps, so there is no theming possible within the LocusMap app...

the OAM maps now include (for UK maps) an additional tag:

<!-- OS_OpenData -->
<osm-tag key='os_open_data' value='crags' zoom-appear='13' />

which renders the OS crag data, so from a theme point of view it is very simple to include... but of course there (presumably) was some considerable scripting effort for the map generation to merge in the OS open data.

Attached is an example of using OAM maps before and after OS crags were included.

Some initial thoughts from me:

Point 1:

I see bicycle=designated is added.

Could we include the following?
   - bicycle=no|yes|designated|permissive
   - foot=no|yes|designated|permissive
   - horse=no|yes|designated|permissive


Point 2:

In the UK we have footpaths and bridleways that are legally protected and signed along their routes - these are known as Public Rights of Way (PROW).

OSM has inluded tagging for these ways (designation):

   https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:designation

and has the following guidance for usage:

   https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Access_provisions_in_the_United_Kingdom

Would it be possible to include this designation tag in LoMap maps?

For the UK, the following values would be useful: public_footpath, public_bridleway, restricted_byway, byway_open_to_all_traffic.
The following values are also used in Isle of Man: access_land, public_cycleway, green_lane.
The following values are also used in Scotland: core_path.

This would provide a massive improvement to be able to indicate footpaths that are of interest to hikers, cyclists and horse riders:
   - bridleways can often be part of a highway=track + designation=public_bridleway - these are currently not displayed in LocusMap but are quite common.
   - bridleways (in the UK at least) are also legally accessible for cyclists - some are sealed and useful to road-bikes but some not and need off-road bicycles.
   - many footpaths in OSM are foot=designated but only because there is a general (Cycle|Foot) signage used by the councils to indicate a shared space footway - these are publicly accessible paths, usually pavements, cyceways, side_walks, combined cycle lanes and footpaths - most are in/around towns. They are not PROW but if rendered as "footpaths" clutter the map with many "additional" paths, resulting in a "can't see the wood for the trees" situation for the walker...


Point 3:

Car parking amenities seem to be growing in OSM over the last year, to the point that the maps are starting to be cluttered with many additional parking=side_street.

Could you include the parking=* tag to help identify which car parking amenties are dedicated off-street parking from the many on-street packing, see:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:parking

This tag is also useful for being able to indicate multi-storey and underground car parks.

When combined with access tag, it allows to identify those car parks that are publicly accessible and likely destinations for people arriving somewhere to park.


Point 4:

I see that many of the appear-zoom levels have been tweaked, some appearing much later...

I noticed when we went from v3 to v4 for OAM that there is a difference in visual scaling between LoMap and v4 maps of the same zoom level.
e.g. zoom=16 in LoMap appears similar in scale to zoom=15 in v4 maps.
This has the effect (for the user) that symbols/ways seem appear much later in v4 maps. When you zoom out in v4 maps you seem to get less information compared to when you switch to LoMap.
...so I was a little surprised to see some appear-zoom levels being increased for some tags...


Point 5:

The OAM maps have recently added OS crag data available from  OS open data. I think Christian did some magic scripting behind the scenes to make this possible for OAM and it is a massive improvement for UK maps.
Is this something that might be considered for LoMap v4?


Point 6:
In OAM maps the map tagging separates out common tag values, e.g. foot=yes and bicycle=yes are transformed into foot=ft_yes and bicycle_bic_yes.
I'm wondering if this is something that is desirable for LoMap v4 maps?
I'm not 100% sure why this was done, but is does mean that you can OR together many tags and check for specific instances of common values like ft_yes or bic_yes.
Perhaps this is now resolved with the bugfix to the double tag issue mentioned earlier?

@menion, no hurry. It would be good if theme creators could access an early beta release of the tag mapping and an example/test map - so we have time to update our themes and provide the user base with working themes as soon as the new lomaps go live...

Hi J,

Yes, I have noticed. I have added the new OS Crag tag to the new version of the theme I'm slowly working on. It's close to ready for v4/v5 maps. But the v3 of the OS Map theme is in need of major updates to support lomap maps and keep the latest look/feel in line with v4/v5 theme...

I could release just the v4/v5 map theme if people want something for Andromaps now....

Hi Jeff,

You are correct, the European tag mapping file defines which information from OSM is in the OAM maps and at which zoom level they can first appear. Some of the tags are renamed for various reasons too.

If there are multiple points/nodes to display then they drawn based on the display and priority options, or the order they appear in the theme file. Order is quite important, and sometimes a compromise has to be made, often transparent fills are used to deal with hidden/layerred items, but this is difficult when emulating the OS map theme.

You can request additional items via the OAM forum;

https://www.openandromaps.org/en/oam-forums/forum/maps

You'll see I've requested some things, but not all requests will be accepted, especially if they do not meet the purpose of OAM maps, which is primarily for walking/cycling. Also there is a 15 tags limit per osm item (node/way/area) which if violated causes the whole tile to not be drawn.

If there are any items in the tag mapping that are not in my theme, please let me know and I'll do my best to include them in a future release.

I am planning to rework the summits in a similar fashion to the OutdoorV5 theme which makes summits visible based on their prominence and zoom level. But first I have to formalise all the v5 and tidal features improvements I have prototyped...

Note, some background info: I have two master theme files, one for locusmap/v3 maps and one for OAM v4/5 maps. Each defines both the night and day themes, to make it easier to work on both at the same.e time, but are very large and hence slow to use. So when I release a theme I have a script that splits the day and night parts into separate theme files. Resulting in the four theme files you are looking at.

Generally I am trying to emulate the look and feel of OS maps with this theme. It will be impossible to exactly match OS maps, since not all features of OS maps are supported by either the source data (OpenStreetMap) or the map creators (e.g. LoMap and OpenAndroMaps).

There is also a difference in how map features are used by the map creators, this is defined by a tag-mapping file. Only the tags in the tag-mapping files can be drawn...

OSM maps include a lot more content than OS maps, and I have added options in the theme to allow displaying addition non-OS content, e.g. Post boxes, hedges etc.

In general I have tried to create similar icons and symbology for non-OS content that are hopefully in keeping with the style of the original OS maps.

I'll take a look at Saddles too. Thanks for the feedback, it is always appreciated. I am working on a massive improvement to the rendering, starting with the v4 theme that mainly supports OAM maps, including v5 maps now.  I'll then be looking to update the LM/v3 map theme...

If I use the dynamic setting the beer glass symbol displays as I wanted but when zooming ok the map doesn't display the "PH" abbreviation. If I set the map to just 1:50k the PH displays when zoomed in but again, not, when zoomed out to1:50k.

Yes, this is because all elements in the map only appear at a predefined zoom level and not before. This will depend on the map creator and the settings they used. For example with the latest OAM v5 maps bars and pubs appear at zoom level 17. They will disappear at zoom level 16 and lower, regardless of what the theme is defined to do.

You can usually find a file called tagmapping.xml where you download your maps from and this defines the "rules" for when certain items will be visible. The theme can also restrict when they appear too. Here is the entries for OAM v5 tagmapping.xml that affect the pub symbols in OS map theme:
   <osm-tag key='amenity' value='pub' zoom-appear='17' />
   <osm-tag key='amenity' value='bar' zoom-appear='17' />

For OS-Dynamic, the map theme uses the following zoom levels for both styles:
   - OS-50k for Z15 and below
   - OS-25K for Z16 and above

So what you have observed seems correct, if a bit annoying.
Personally I would like pubs to be visible much earlier. They appear at Z16 in LoMaps...
Hope that helps.

I created this cursor and having been using it for many years. I thought perhaps others might like to use it, so here it is.

the symbols used are:
  - empty red circle when stationary and your position is based on network signal.
  - red circle with small inner circle when stationary and your GPS position is locked.
  - red circle with rotating arrow when you are moving.
  - red cross when you scroll away from your position.
  - simple red/white compass symbol.
  - darkened/smoked field of view overlay is used for the show view option.

See attached preview (note blue dashed outlines are not displayed, just the size/edges of the images).

Oh, I see, you mean accessing a legend in a zipped theme...

It would seem that making the path relative to the theme's xml file would make sense. Is the zipped theme unzipped in a local cache somewhere when in use?