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My own very minor gripe is with the maps component. Because it uses OpenStreetMap as a map source it doesn't show any settlements larger 250,000 for my area be
by Lio 5y ago
My own very minor gripe is with the maps component.
Because it uses OpenStreetMap as a map source it doesn't show any settlements larger 250,000 for my area because those settlements call themselves "towns" and not "cities".
When you zoom out all you see is a blank space with no labels for quite a large area of the screen.
Meanwhile very small settlements (< 20K people) are shown at max zoom just because they happen to have the right kind of church building, which in the UK means they can call themselves "cities".
I've raised this issue with OpenStreetMaps support for many years and they just either say it's something to be fixed by client libraries or it's not important.
They could be right I guess. However, Goople maps, Apple maps and Microsoft maps handle this correctly and that's what OpenDesktop explicitly say they are trying to replace here.
- NGRhodes 5y agoFYI, in the UK, historically city status was given to towns with cathedrals, but since the 20th century city status is awarded by the monarch. England has 3 large towns with over 200000 population -Luton, Northampton and Reading and about 30 towns with between 100000 and 200000 population.
- Rygian 5y agoThere is an ongoing proposal discussed on Reddit [0] for an alternate rendering that fills in "empty areas" with a different algorithm. The comparison is really nice [1]. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/openstreetmap/comments/pc9fof/openstreetmap_places_rendering_that_fills_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/openstreetmap/comments/pc9fof/opens... [1] https://tiles.musa.kodapan.se/compare.html https://tiles.musa.kodapan.se/compare.html
- jermaustin1 5y agoThe Hydda map also seems to have some issues in the regard. Looking in the west midlands, Crewe is missing on some zoom level (not sure how far in) while the smaller towns that surround it are there. The OSM map works as expected in this case.
- Tijdreiziger 5y agoWow, interesting that the UK still has this distinction. In the Netherlands, city status (stadsrechten) was constitutionally abolished in 1848.
- m4lvin 5y agoThanks for the fun fact. Appropriate user name ;-)
- throwawayboise 5y agoSounds like you're saying in the UK a "town" is generally larger than a "city"? This is the opposite of what is implied by those terms in the USA.
- Lio 5y agoEffectively in the UK the terms don’t really denote size as they do in some other countries. The largest conurbations are cities but you can’t say that a city is always larger than a town (or vis versa).
- stevage 5y agoThat is not a fundamental problem with OSM. Indeed, Bing Maps uses OSM as its data source.
- thayne 5y agoAt least there is something. Where I live, openstreetmaps has streets, but no buildings.