On 17 September 2012 13:58, @japhigu <dualdrin
...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I do not know how involved with OSM any of you are here, but I have to share
> this with you.
> During the last 4 yrs I was in three similar situations - I needed offline
> maps of a specific region to take with me, without the need for GPS tracking
> etc, with known zoom levels. Each time I tried to "get shit done" with OSM
> it turned out to be a horrible waste of time (I kept trying around 7 hrs on
> avg). Why?
> There is no single usable (i.e. working) GUI that I can get in binary form
> for the Windows OS. Sure, I can compile the source - but not when you are in
> a hurry.
> The first time it was just bad. None of the apps worked on the two systems I
> was running. The devs must have been the only one's running their software.
> The 2nd (1,5 yrs) and 3rd time (few weeks ago) I got my hands on around 3 or
> four different apps that were starting and not throwing exceptions.
> Of course, all of them had a GUI that was just ... imagine the worst, most
> frustrating thing in your life times 10^2.
> Anyway - downloading maps was fucking impossible. Only one of the programs
> ever initiated a connection, others didn't (or even attempted it). There,
> finding my location was no problem, but the map tiles being downloaded were
> from THE DEVELOPERS HOME AREA - after setting the target location
> specifically. Jeez! I am not the best GUI dev in the world and I never did a
> GIU in py or the other languages used - but that GUI was pure evil. I sent
> similar but defused comments to the devs - I doubt I will ever get a reply.
> After all that I resorted to downloading the raw osm files myself. Then the
> displaying program I used - one of the recommendations from the OSM wiki -
> crashed. Then I thought "GTFO" and used my old old Miscrosoft Mapping
> solution from 2009. Which works great. And was ridiculously cheap.But has
> old and not very detailed maps.
> In a nutshell: what good is OSM if the only thing you can use it with is a
> SatNav that is open enough to feed it .osm's or with you compiling and
> tuning the source so that it it runs on your specific machine? Little good.
Sorry for replying with a delay, still travelling.
So poor user experience is I think the biggest issue with a lot of
open projects. Even worse than that people are being told "patches
welcome" and sometimes they do come back with patches to fix some
details and a they get into a long debate and their improvements never
get used.
Fortunately things are getting a little better in OSM. If you're and
Android user you might wanna try OsmAnd, I'm consistently hearing
positive opinions about it (haven't tried myself). I recently found
out my dad who's in his 60s is using another osm-based Android app.
Not giving its name because too many options is another thing that
scares users away, try OsmAnd first.
Though what is needed for the things to really get better is for the
manufacturers to switch to OSM for their default provider (or as an
option) in their stock map apps. Microsoft already has it as an
option in Bing, not sure about mobile apps. Apple used OSM data in
some iOS versions in some countries only.
Cheers
