Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Organic Maps

organicmaps.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 382 posts

Re: Organic Maps

#351

Post by maelito »

bpev wrote: post #305
maelito wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you explore the solution of just caching the pmtiles requests responses as well, instead of IndexedDb ?

I didn't dig too deeply into it, because explicitly storing locally just gives a bit more control. Also, since I was kind of imitating the style of Organic Maps, I wanted to give the ability to download entire tiles. I view caching responses more like a performance enhancement, whereas I wanted explicit offline support.

That makes sens. Both features combined would be cool. In any case, a cache invalidation feature should be always visible to the user, so that he knows that clicking this button will switch to online mode.

Re: Organic Maps

#352

Post by maelito »

bluebarbet wrote: post #271
CircuitSeuss wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool; but this is one of those instances where I wish the wonderful and benevolent FOSS developers of the world would consolidate efforts behind existing projects to make fewer better things instead of many never-finished forks. Especially since there is not yet a single open source map ui that is polished enough to compete with enterprise maps.

Agree. In terms of features Organic Maps has never been more than a pale imitation of OsmAnd, only "more ergonomic". The developers admit this themselves. So why couldn't they have just invested their time and energy into making OsmAnd more ergonomic! Ego-fueled duplication of efforts is a real problem in FOSS.

Last I checked, Osmand uses an unconventional map rendered. I would want to contribute to it, it's lagging on so many devices, I can barely use it. Comaps is perfectly smooth.

I'm not saying ego problems don't exist of course. But taking Osmand and making a simple general public app out of this is a huge effort (human and tech), probably more than building a side app.

Re: Organic Maps

#353

Post by u8080 »

gedankenstuecke wrote: post #345
u8080 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>do the same to OM by equally aggressively ask for money I use OM for a lot of years and never saw any aggressive money ask, could you point me what I am missing?

when opening the page for a place, the bottom for me regularly displays the "donation" ask which in good big tech fashion gives you the "ask again later" option.

Is that on iOS? Never saw such thing on android

Re: Organic Maps

#354

Post by maelito »

CircuitSeuss wrote: post #233
maelito wrote: post #63

Organic Maps and its fork Comaps still lack a Web client. We're this on https://cartes.app , trying to push the Web further (even on mobile devices) so that you don't even need an app for most use cases.

Cool; but this is one of those instances where I wish the wonderful and benevolent FOSS developers of the world would consolidate efforts behind existing projects to make fewer better things instead of many never-finished forks. Especially since there is not yet a single open source map ui that is polished enough to compete with enterprise maps.

We at cartes.app have discussed with some people Comaps. We've made links from cartes.app to Comaps, e.g. for navigation, a feature that we don't have.

We've not seen anything from their side. We don't really understand why they wouldn't want a proper Web version.

It's even worse in the non-open source world : Kagi's maps are bad. Qwant dropped their cool map project, too expensive. Ecosia has none, redirects to Google, its main competitor.

They could "just" clone cartes.app and run `bun i && bun start` and `ansible-playbook` to launch their instance of cartes.app, but we can't reach them. Or fund the project.

What's important though is that we collaborate on the tools we all use. OSM, MapLibre, Photon, Pelias, Protomaps, Motis, Brouter, etc. are all tools that we somehow share, each end-user app having their own combination of them.

We also thought like you do when outside of this world. But now, its a human problem. How to reach people and how to gain the time that it would take to collaborate ? We don't have the keys.

Re: Organic Maps

#355

Post by ffaser5gxlsll »

ponkipo wrote: post #309

As a active OSM contibutor with 7k+ changesets, Organic is my favorite map app I use for years traveling around the world, also donated to them. Only use GMaps for finding businesses. Tried CoMaps, saw no reason to migrate to it at all - why migrate to basically no-name app (in terms of popularity) which is developed by who knows who (not even a Maps Me or OM devs) if Organic is totally good, has updates, stable, wor…

I'm also a regular OSM contributor and I cycle between various apps/layers. I'm in the alpine region, regular hiker, and osm is the only map source I use (frankly, I find gmaps to be garbage for anything except looking up businesses).

I regularly try comaps, but while it's pretty smooth at rendering, the detail is visibly lacking at anything except maximum zoom level. When enabling contour lines, it's cluttered and hard to read. I tried to use it a few times on hikes, and while it's still much better than gmaps, if you're looking for something to use on a hike as an actual readable map and not just something to follow directions on, I'd say bite the bullet and get osmand.

osmand has indeed confusing interface, but the map rendering itself is excellent and can be heavily customized as needed.

On the web front, tracestack and mapy are both excellent presentations.

Re: Organic Maps

#356

Post by ponkipo »

lone-cloud wrote: post #71

I would recommend people use comaps instead which is the actual FOSS fork. OM has a long history of malicious behaviour like quietly adding ads, turning a part of its previously open sourced code proprietary and misappropriating donations. OM has lost most of its community a year ago to comaps and are now rushing vibe coded features to compensate.

> OM has lost most of its community a year ago to comaps > rushing to compensate

I understand that you, being a contributor to CoMaps which people can see on your page, want to promote it, but it’s just spreading false info. Just one Russian community of OrganicMaps in Telegram has 4000+ members, CoMaps RU is not even at 200. Global group of OM is at 1650, CoMaps is at 840 of it.

It’s not OM who is compensating all over the place in this thread.

Re: Organic Maps

#357

Post by dwa3592 »

jraph wrote: post #269
dwa3592 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>if you run stock iOS or Android with the Google services, I believe you are already screwed anyway: I wouldn't trust them not to constantly leak stuff about you in the background even if you don't actively use the GPS, at least to build their traffic info and to keep their access network-based location database updated. are you sure this is true? - i can still run the phone on airplane mode(with GPS off) after i ha…

> are you sure this is true? I'm sure I don't trust them. > I am not sure if you looked at the repo I linked I did skim it to get a grasp of your approach. But I'm answering statements made here too. I think your project is worth pursuing. I'm genuinely curious what you come up with. This is actually why I spent quite some time writing my comments: I hope they helped you in some way. I do believe your project could u…

>>the fact you didn't know about the existing private open source offline mapping solution also rang an alarm in me

why? that's a bit of an overreaction from your alarm bells honestly. i didn't know about organic maps because i never looked up for this solution and never came across this specific app in my readings. what i am working on (and want to figure out) has less to do with commercial angle of privacy (which organic maps solve) and more to do with navigating without relying on any external signal. i truly think we should be able to navigate earth (land/sea/air/subs) without any external human controlled signal (GPS/Internet/radio etc); that in my mind is true offline navigation. but you can argue that organic maps is also an offline navigation app and i think for an everyday user that's true.

your comments are helpful. thanks for being so thorough with your thought process. i am trying to write on https://trulytyped.com/user/4f448758/deepan-wadhwa - but i have not written anything technical yet and there is no RSS button there yet. let me add it today haha. thank you.

Re: Organic Maps

#358

Post by ygra »

lavela wrote: post #314
ygra wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nota bene: those end up as notes on the map which another mapper has to input manually. There's a lot of spam and dubious entries so I often no longer bother entering them, especially in places I don't know or where I cannot verify the information.

I was using Street Complete for some time and was always wondering if using these apps is considered helpful or if it only creates churn/noise. Is there a general consensus on that in the community? Would it be more accepted to just do a few small, potentially not metadata-complete edits myself or is the review structure (if there is any) geared more towards fewer, more steady contributors? Did one direct edit once a…

As a frequent contributor myself I love StreetComplete and I wouldn't worry about it perhaps generating a few changesets more than strictly necessary (it tends to make one changeset per quest (with multiple amendments for individual answers) and also only during a certain time frame. Sure, that means that adding information to a staircase creates multiple changesets (incline, step_count, surface, handrail), but that doesn't really matter.

What StreetComplete is very good at, in my opinion, is simply QA on the ground. SC asks about features existing on the map (benches, bus stops, shops, roads, barriers, etc.) and some of them might go stale. So asking about opening hours of a shop might cause someone to look and notice that the shop is closed now, or replaced by another one, so in many cases the quests that add detail to objects have the nice side-effect that those are being looked at and reviewed whether they still exist, which otherwise does not happen often. The barrier to adding new data is often lower than fixing or removing outdated information.

And it's such a low barrier to entry, especially for people not familiar with OSM's tagging, since the UX is very well designed for beginners in my eyes (while still being useful for advanced mappers), that you can easily recommend it to people who like those kind of hobbies (e.g. geocaching, Pokémon Go). For me it was an excuse to go outside more, also to places I haven't been, during COVID-19, just to tick off another quest.

Re: Organic Maps

#359

Post by ryukoposting »

embedding-shape wrote: post #160
ryukoposting wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll preface this by saying I can't speak for India. I live in the US. Use your own discretion to decide what here might apply to you. I've been using Organic Maps for almost 3 years. I lived in Chicago during this time, as well as some smaller American cities. I go back and forth between Organic Maps and GMaps depending on the situation. I've found that Organic Maps' lack of traffic data isn't a big deal for me. It…

> I've found that Organic Maps' lack of traffic data isn't a big deal for me. It doesn't always give you an accurate ETA, sure, but it isn't any worse at actually getting you to your destination. Some places live traffic information gives you a choice between a 10 minute way and 40 minute way though, if you get stuck in the wrong spots it really truly sucks, and for us who live in these places, being able to easily r…

> Some places live traffic information gives you a choice between a 10 minute way and 40 minute way though

I lived in one of those alleged places (Chicago) and didn't observe this in practice. When Google sees that 10-minute route, it quickly starts routing drivers that way, and eventually both routes equalize around, say, 30 minutes. When two routes are that disparate, by the time you actually get midway through the faster one, it's just as congested as the slower route.

I think there's a weird psychology to these apps. When Google gives you a wack route through a residential area, it feels like you're getting an advantage. It feels like you're beating traffic. But you never beat traffic in a car, because you are traffic. And Google never sends only one car on a faster detour. It was always half a dozen of them or more. I saw this a million times in Chicago.

Getting pretty local here, but I remember one of Google's favorite alternate routes vividly. Instead of taking the Edens south into the Kennedy junction, it would have you exit onto Foster and then take some rando residential street south to Montrose or Irving Park. Every single time it did this, I'd see a parade of cars in front of me and behind me. The white glow of GMaps on a new car's infotainment screen is unmistakable. I could see what was going on, all of us could see what was going on. Meanwhile, you're driving past a bunch of kids waiting for their bus, or a ride home from school, and those are all delayed because me and a hundred others are using a side street as a commuter artery. This saved, on a good day, five minutes on a 35 minute commute. It was more antisocial than it was efficient.

Re: Organic Maps

#360

Post by [deleted] »

TFNA wrote: post #153
AmblingAvocado wrote: post #128

> the same people, who created MapsWithMe/Maps.Me app Ah, the same people who I bought Maps.Me from in 2012 - that when I went to use it recently now bombards me with "sale ending in 4 hours!" pro subscription ad popovers in order to restore functionality (more than 10 offline map areas) that existed at the time I bought the app? No thanks.

Maps.me got sold to a series of subsequent owners. It was those subsequent owners who enshittified the app, not the original developers mentioned in your quotation. The original developers only later returned to the codebase, because it was freely licensed, and forked it in a different direction.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN