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someone else said that according to a Google engineer we don't "really" want it and I wanted to see if this is true. I put in a random street (mission street i

someone else said that according to a Google engineer we don't "really" want it and I wanted to see if this is true. I put in a random street (mission street in San Fransciso), this how it looked for me on desktop: https://imgur.com/a/aOERdLR https://imgur.com/a/aOERdLR Then I started filling out streets with the continuous name of the street (first copy and pasting the name in small squares, then by hand adding red dots to separate them). This is how it looked after: https://imgur.com/a/xQiF6pm https://imgur.com/a/xQiF6pm I was pretty careless/moved quickly, but that should match some of the effect of imperfect algorithmic mapping decisions. The key insight is that even if one specific crook looks horid (not enough space to lay it out neatly), humans will just look at another part of the street to determine the name. But if it's really a little nook where the crooked letters don't contain enough information we'll pinch/zoom in to make it big enough to display legibly. If you really look closely at my picture you will see places where I totally garbled street names through careless copy and pasting and overlap. No problem at all. The "after" is much more beautiful/useful. But notice two streets are blank: https://imgur.com/a/I24REM0 https://imgur.com/a/I24REM0 This is because their name didn't appear even a single time in my view. that means even though I'm on desktop and there's plenty of space, I would have to zoom or scroll to see them! They're literally information that is missing from the map. For other streets I had to look a fair way away to copy and paste, since the street name wasn't anywhere near where I was working. (For example, looking at my first, original map, suppose you're at the top-left point, on Jersey street: how long do you go down Jersey street to the right, before you hit the Jersey and Church street intersection? This is a super common question!) I think the resulting map is extremely repetitive, but pretty useful/beautiful. Humans can filter out repetitive information really easily. It's just no problem for us at all. Tasks such as the one I mentioned, where you are about to go down Jersey street and need to know when you'll hit Church street, are some of the main types of navigation tasks we do every day. So I don't see the issue with making the repetitive map. Instead of roads, it should just repeat the name of the road. (On the other hand, those of you who disagree can at least see what the Google engineer was talking about.)

jefftk 8y ago
I can't tell whether you're getting serious, but I'm pretty sure most users would not prefer your change. It's so dense it's hard to read, and in a repetitive way.
- logicallee 8y ago
  (Yes, totally serious.) For me, it's not hard to read. I'd prefer it, anyway. Still, if you wouldn't prefer it then we can see what the Google engineer meant, as this is exactly what you get if you show as much information as possible!
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    I'm confused, are you only talking about apple maps? I just checked on Google maps and I can easily see all the street names on my screen, as long as I zoom in far enough that there is enough space.
    - logicallee 8y ago
      I was specifically exploring this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18359646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18359646 I wanted to see how it would look if "whenever you zoom in enough that there's enough room on a visible street to put a label, then put the label!" I think my render looks absolutely fine. I don't see why I wouldn't always use it if I had a toggle switch. Yes it's cluttered if you just glance at it, but we don't use maps as pieces of minimalist art.
      - blueski 8y ago
        I dislike it because it slows my consumption of the map; annoying while walking, possibly dangerous while driving. We're all accustomed to reading lines of text in their entirety, which results in endless repetition here. Training the eye to look only between one set of red dots may be possible, but I doubt it would ever be as effortless as reading a discrete word with whitespace around it. I do agree every road should be labeled when there's space - perhaps even at regular intervals when there's space, but making the labeling continuous is counterproductive. Apart from being easy to consume, the map tiles must also be in sync with the company's brand and design ethos. Its hard to imagine Apple's minimalist aesthetic delivering these tiles.
tokyodude 8y ago
you choose the easiest case, large city blocks in a grid. Try a European or Asian city with lots of twisty roads and alleys and it gets much harder. The maps here are already covered with the names of buildings, stations, parks, hospitals etc... I often want road names in Tokyo but they are also competing for space of transit lines as well as places with double or triple decker differently named things like there's a freeway named A over aroad named B which is over a Subway line named C Road names are usually not as important in Japan as they are not used in addresses but they come in handy when explaining to a cab driver how to get somewhere
- logicallee 8y ago
  > Try a European or Asian city with lots of twisty roads and alleys and it gets much harder. I showed what would happen if you literally follow the rule "whenever [...] there's enough room on a visible street to put a label, then put the label". That's the specification. If you show me a twisty road with no room for a label, then according to this specification it doesn't get the label. The specification (for what we're testing) says "whenever there is room". Whenever there is enough whitespace on the road.
  - alphakappa 8y ago
    That’s a misunderstanding of the spec. The ask is to put in at least one label if there is space (when previously there were none). Filling all available space with redundant labels is not the ask.
    - logicallee 8y ago
      OK, mine is the result of running this pseudocode: # Label all streets as much as possible for (each street on screen): while (that street has room for a label): # (even if already labeled) put a label on that street # i.e. an additional one yours is: # Try to label unlabeled streets for (each street on screen) if (no label on screen for that street): # if unlabeled if (street has room for a label): # ...can we fix? put a label on that street # ...then fix (I would usually write this with an && rather than nested if's but I know mobile makes you scroll sideways) As a followup, could you please define "street has room for a label"? When do you consider that a street has room for a label?
rhizome 8y ago
I've had to scroll the length of streets all they way across the entire city before it showed me a street name.
tomaskafka 8y ago
At company I worked for (czech search engine Seznam.cz), the map team made an awesome 1st April easter egg when they took this to the eleven: https://mapy.cz/textova?x=15.5603819&y=49.5896653&z=13 https://mapy.cz/textova?x=15.5603819&y=49.5896653&z=13 (it just says 'roadroadroad', 'houseshouseshouses', 'riverriverriver' ... :))
- logicallee 8y ago
  I know you know it says roarroadroad but to me it looks foreign. When I zoom in I see this as great: https://imgur.com/a/g8q4WhB https://imgur.com/a/g8q4WhB And if Kopec in the lower center were the name of a street, I think it's great that it's written there. The only thing missing is the red dots, so instead of roadroadroadroad it said road·road·road·road (by the way you might wonder why I made the dots red in my example: it's so the eye can just focus on the red dots to sparsely get the road's path.) I just don't see the issue at all. It's way better, at that zoom level, to have to use my human ability to notice and ignore patterns and ignore noise while concentrating on what I want, than to use two fingers to try to zoom in enough for the map to place the names. I just don't see the issue with the view you presented. It looks great!
- iguy 8y ago
  Oh that's awesome. For non-slavic speakers, I especially like how it stops at the border, so you can get half a screen of normal map and half a screen of strange words.
logicallee 8y ago
(Too late to edit, but I just noticed that imgur makes my pictures look like garbage on mobile. You may have to request the desktop view briefly to see what I saw when making the comment on desktop.)

jefftk 8y ago

I can't tell whether you're getting serious, but I'm pretty sure most users would not prefer your change. It's so dense it's hard to read, and in a repetitive way.

logicallee 8y ago
(Yes, totally serious.) For me, it's not hard to read. I'd prefer it, anyway. Still, if you wouldn't prefer it then we can see what the Google engineer meant, as this is exactly what you get if you show as much information as possible!
- jjeaff 8y ago
  I'm confused, are you only talking about apple maps? I just checked on Google maps and I can easily see all the street names on my screen, as long as I zoom in far enough that there is enough space.
  - logicallee 8y ago
    I was specifically exploring this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18359646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18359646 I wanted to see how it would look if "whenever you zoom in enough that there's enough room on a visible street to put a label, then put the label!" I think my render looks absolutely fine. I don't see why I wouldn't always use it if I had a toggle switch. Yes it's cluttered if you just glance at it, but we don't use maps as pieces of minimalist art.
    - blueski 8y ago
      I dislike it because it slows my consumption of the map; annoying while walking, possibly dangerous while driving. We're all accustomed to reading lines of text in their entirety, which results in endless repetition here. Training the eye to look only between one set of red dots may be possible, but I doubt it would ever be as effortless as reading a discrete word with whitespace around it. I do agree every road should be labeled when there's space - perhaps even at regular intervals when there's space, but making the labeling continuous is counterproductive. Apart from being easy to consume, the map tiles must also be in sync with the company's brand and design ethos. Its hard to imagine Apple's minimalist aesthetic delivering these tiles.

tokyodude 8y ago

you choose the easiest case, large city blocks in a grid. Try a European or Asian city with lots of twisty roads and alleys and it gets much harder. The maps here are already covered with the names of buildings, stations, parks, hospitals etc... I often want road names in Tokyo but they are also competing for space of transit lines as well as places with double or triple decker differently named things like there's a freeway named A over aroad named B which is over a Subway line named C Road names are usually not as important in Japan as they are not used in addresses but they come in handy when explaining to a cab driver how to get somewhere

logicallee 8y ago
> Try a European or Asian city with lots of twisty roads and alleys and it gets much harder. I showed what would happen if you literally follow the rule "whenever [...] there's enough room on a visible street to put a label, then put the label". That's the specification. If you show me a twisty road with no room for a label, then according to this specification it doesn't get the label. The specification (for what we're testing) says "whenever there is room". Whenever there is enough whitespace on the road.
- alphakappa 8y ago
  That’s a misunderstanding of the spec. The ask is to put in at least one label if there is space (when previously there were none). Filling all available space with redundant labels is not the ask.
  - logicallee 8y ago
    OK, mine is the result of running this pseudocode: # Label all streets as much as possible for (each street on screen): while (that street has room for a label): # (even if already labeled) put a label on that street # i.e. an additional one yours is: # Try to label unlabeled streets for (each street on screen) if (no label on screen for that street): # if unlabeled if (street has room for a label): # ...can we fix? put a label on that street # ...then fix (I would usually write this with an && rather than nested if's but I know mobile makes you scroll sideways) As a followup, could you please define "street has room for a label"? When do you consider that a street has room for a label?

rhizome 8y ago

I've had to scroll the length of streets all they way across the entire city before it showed me a street name.

tomaskafka 8y ago

At company I worked for (czech search engine Seznam.cz), the map team made an awesome 1st April easter egg when they took this to the eleven: https://mapy.cz/textova?x=15.5603819&y=49.5896653&z=13 https://mapy.cz/textova?x=15.5603819&y=49.5896653&z=13 (it just says 'roadroadroad', 'houseshouseshouses', 'riverriverriver' ... :))

logicallee 8y ago
I know you know it says roarroadroad but to me it looks foreign. When I zoom in I see this as great: https://imgur.com/a/g8q4WhB https://imgur.com/a/g8q4WhB And if Kopec in the lower center were the name of a street, I think it's great that it's written there. The only thing missing is the red dots, so instead of roadroadroadroad it said road·road·road·road (by the way you might wonder why I made the dots red in my example: it's so the eye can just focus on the red dots to sparsely get the road's path.) I just don't see the issue at all. It's way better, at that zoom level, to have to use my human ability to notice and ignore patterns and ignore noise while concentrating on what I want, than to use two fingers to try to zoom in enough for the map to place the names. I just don't see the issue with the view you presented. It looks great!
iguy 8y ago
Oh that's awesome. For non-slavic speakers, I especially like how it stops at the border, so you can get half a screen of normal map and half a screen of strange words.

logicallee 8y ago

(Too late to edit, but I just noticed that imgur makes my pictures look like garbage on mobile. You may have to request the desktop view briefly to see what I saw when making the comment on desktop.)