Monday 28 July 2008

More of Beverley

We've returned to Beverley, but it is still not finished. After the last couple of visits to the somewhat tatty housing estates, today we worked around the Minster and further west. Beverley has a fine, large mediaeval church that rivals some cathedrals, but it is a minster so Beverley is a market town not a catherdral city. The photo is the view of the Minster from the Westwood - a large common with a golf course slotted in it. The greens have little fences around them to keep the cows off them.

Beverley is the county town of the East Riding of Yorkshire - sort of the capital of East Yorkshire. There was some talk on the mailing lists about adding a tag for capitals so they render better. I think adding a tag for a capital is fine - more data is usually good - but I'm not sure how the tag might work: capital=yes (capital of what). Maybe as part of a relation, but that would cover a large area ( relation marking Texas just to show the capital?). The is_in tag might be useful, but I still don't see how it marks a capital and it's not used consistently. Then there's rendering. Why show Beverley just because it's a county town rather than Bridlington or Goole. Population size or land area make more sense to me.

I ran into a long-standing problem again today - private roads. There's a road off Long Lane in Beverley called Old Manor Lawns. It has signs saying "Private - no entry without an appointment" and "Private no through road". I didn't go down the road to get a track to add it as a (access=private) road, so it's not on the map. I sometimes venture down a private road to get a track, but not when they have such a determined set of signs, so how to map it?

T@H maps are sometimes a bit of a pain. Requesting a render from InformationFreeway is sometimes hard work, but the renders are much quicker and, as always, invaluable as a check while the route is fresh in my mind. The Wiki says the T@H server needs a reboot - I could have flown to California to reboot it by now! The work Spaetz has done to manage the T@H server has helped the upload process, but serving tiles seems too hard work for it. The great thing about having so many people involved is that someone will contribute the answer. I just wish it was me - my 30 years experience is in all kinds of computer systems and languages, but not for Linux.

Beverley still needs a couple more visits at least.

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