ChristianK

[done] OpenAndroMaps website switches to HTTPS/SSL this week

/2 Comments/in , , /by

The OpenAndroMaps website will switch to secure transfer protocoll  according HTTPS / SSL this week.

This step is required by the Google guidlines to provide the HTTPS / SSL for all sites that require user inputs such as comments, user accounts, or forums.
This is an important step ahead in data security, which has been supported on the side of OpenAndroMaps since long by flanking, server-side actions like Intruderdedection, protection against BruteForce attacks and integration into various blacklists.

 

UPDATE 2017-08-22 18:00h MEZ: Done, the Website is running on fine on SSL, no mixed contend any more – we have a green lock-symbol on all pages. I  have tested all functions and have’nt found any bug. However, if you experience problems please post here as comment or in the forum.

Best regards, Christian

ChristianK

Please update your Renderthemes !

/0 Comments/in , /by

With the update of the maps next week there are critical changes in the structure of the maps. The difficulties of the mountain paths are rendererd slightly different (the sac_scale).
The renderthemes are now prepared for this change, please install these updated themes.

Link to Tiramisu Theme

Elevate/Elements Theme install

Openandromaps_HC theme

Please update your themes, otherwise the sac_scale of the mountain paths will be rendered wrong !!

ChristianK

IMPORTANT CHANGES for Themes (tag-mapping)

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Hi,

This is an information for Theme-Composers.
There will be an important change in tag-mapping for the OpenAndroMaps.

Maps for testing your Themes are available here:

Download Area for Developers = Maps for testing your themes

 

Until today sac_scale was preprocessed to carry only 4 levels:
T1,T2,T3 and T4, while T4 included T5+T6 too.

Now sac_scale will be extended for all levels = T1 – T6 (August update), so seperate levels for T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6

This includes some minor changes:
DAV_SCALE “black” is transformed to SAC_SCALE=T5 (was T4 so far)
If a way includes any “via_ferrata” tag/value SAC_SCALE is set to “T6” (was T4 so far)

_and_
in a second step (October) raw_sac_scale will be no longer supported = removed from Tag-Mapping!

SO: sac_scale T4 will NO LONGER INCLUDE T5+T6 > T5 AND T6 are seperate values from August update on.
THIS MEANS: You have to extend existing rules for sac_scale=T4 to “sac_scale”=”T4|T5|T6”
AND existing rules for “raw_sac_scale” have to be extended to “sac_scale|raw_sac_scale”

Please prepare your themes.

This have to be made in a 2-step process:

Extend your rules so that sac_scale prozesses T5 and T6 too.
So if you have a rule :

extend it to:

from October on you can create additional, seperate rules for T5/T6

If you use a raw_sac_scale, extend the rules:

So everyone making themes for OpenAndroMaps have to ensure that everything renders fine when expanding the sac_scale and finally deleting raw_sac_scale. I know its annoying – however there is no other way to ensure that the maps render fine in future.

Additional TAGS that will be removed from tag-mapping by end of October:

  • raw_sac_scale (as mentioned above)
  • incline_dir
  • class_bicycle_mtb, class_bicycle_road (maybe we find a solution to transform _mtb to existing tags)
  • noexit

I’m terribly sorry about this, however recently I discovered that there is a limit of max. 15 Tags in the MapsforgeWriter per OSM_Object so I have to reduce the amount of tags – otherwise we end up in white tiles rendering the maps at is was the case with parts of upper Austria last weeks.

See discussion of this issue at MapsforgeDevGroup:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/mapsforge-dev/kQKfCMGk2Ec

Best regards
Christian

ChristianK

Multilingual Maps available

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Multilingual maps- what does this mean?

As an example: The OpenStreetMap database provides NAMES for most objects like Citys, Roads, Churches, Rivers, aso.. in different languages. So for the map of Israel usually in hebrew, arabian, english, maybe in german. For maps of Russia usually in russian and english.

Up to now only one language per maps was possible to include and display on our smartphones.
So providing two languages for one maps for OAM meant making –  and for you, downloading two different maps.

With the new, multilingual maps it is possible to include different languages while making the map and switching map-language in an APP – if an APP is compatible with these maps AND provides a language switcher. This is the case for ORUXMAPS and LOCUS for Android and Cruiser for Android + PC.

Here you see a small screencast of ORUXMAPS switching between russian and englich using the map of Moscow:

Orux-Multilingual_Maps_OAM[EN]

So we decided to provide the multilingual maps on OpenAndroMaps.
The effort for providing two different versions of the maps (old single and new multilingual = 250 each) is crazy.
However, we are aware that a lot of APPs still only support the old “V3” single-language maps – and keeping our users in mind we will support both versions for while, as far and long as our resources will allow this.

For now we provide the new multilingual “V4” maps for download to PC AND for direct install to ORUXMAPS. The download/install buttons for these maps are RED, the included languages are shown for each map as abbreviations in square brackets. The new map files itself are identified by a “_ML” suffix.
So, eg., while the name of old map is “Germany.map” the name of the multilingual map is “Germany_ML.map”

For more information klick here

The old maps that we provided in different languages will be available in future only in one language (usually native lang. or english) – this is the case for all russian mapps, several maps for Asia aso. PLUS the multilingual version.

The POI files for the multilingual maps are included in the zip-files of the maps. With the next update of ORUXMAPS these POI-files will be installed in the right place on your Smartphone if chose direct install.

 

Next posting will deal with the complete redesign of the categorie-structure of the OpenAndroMaps POI-files.

Best regards
Tobias & Christian

ChristianK

OAM – Website has moved to new Server

/0 Comments/in , , /by

The planed “maintenance” of the OpenAndroMaps website ended up in renting a new, performant server with the latest operating system in a fast network …..

Furthermore, several overweight plugins were exchanged against lightweight ones from GitHub and everything was adapted to run under PHP7 – this should be fine for the next months.

The advantage for you: fast response times (around the 400ms load time) after I have spent a full weekend with the memcached server  :-).
The page rendering times on Android is not so nice, unfortunately this is a common problem on these devices.

SPAM: I’v installed a new Spam-Protection. Please dont use disposal EMail addresses, this will not work.

Now we can concentrate on the real thing: Making maps, pois, themes, docs.
Maybe some of you have already seen that multilingual maps now available for download – we will present these maps in brief later on.

See you
Christian

ChristianK

From 7th of March better map starting positions

/0 Comments/in , /by

Dear OpenAndroMaps Community!

 

Unitl now the map starting position after loading a new map was set to the arithmetical center of the area the map covered.
Unfortunatelly sometimes, at high zoom levels and with GPs device disabled, you ended up in the blue sea or in the middle of nowhere after loading a map.

From now on every map has its own starting position set by hand – usually the capital of the country/region or a well known natural preserve or something like this.

As an example: Loading a fresh map of Cannary Islands – until know you ended up in the blue sea, from now on the map starting point will be N28,46560°  W16,25398° = Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

This improvement is the reason why the update for March is delayed for a few days – the map starting points for ~270 maps have to be defined. The updated maps should be available from 7th of March on starting with Europe/Germany.

 

best regards
Tobias & Christian

SantaClausVillage Rovaniemi
ChristianK

Yet another bussy year is drawing to a close…

/0 Comments/in /by

Dear members of the OpenAndroMaps community,

another year is drawing to a close, already the fifth year for OAM.
When I first started producing vector maps it wasn’t possible to imagine what great success the idea of free hiking and cycling maps in a compact format would be.
Five years are a long time in an era in which continous and accelerating change is the only constant.

Without my ally Tobias, who is continually pushing forward and is creating the best possible renderthemes, OAM wouldn’t be what it is today – probably the best vector maps for all outdoor fanatics and travellers.

A new member of the team is Michael, who made the new world overview maps – in excellent quality.

I also like to thank all users who made the effort to register in our forum and give hints, suggestions and error reports. This is very important for us as we can be routine-blinded or just lack the time to test every map update for errors. Although our standard is and can only be absolutely professional, we do all this in our rare spare time and with only a tiny budget.

Our goal is to sustain and enhance this project and ask you kindly to further support us.

The OAM team wishes you all a merry christmas!
Tobias, Michael, Christian

ChristianK

Windows/MSIE/Edge Smartscreen blocks downloads

/0 Comments/in , , /by

The Smartscreen filter of MS Internetexplorer/Edge reports OpenAndroMaps website as “unsafe”.
If you have doubts about the integrity of OpenAndroMaps please perform a check on a meta-virusengine like Virustotal or a similar service. These services checks a website against the databases of numerous virustools of high reputation like Bitdefender, Kaspersky, Avast, etc..

https://www.virustotal.com/en/

In case of OpenAndroMaps the result ist : Clean Site

If you have already installed a solid virustool on your machine or mobile device there is no need for MS Smartfilter cause most of these tools are scanning the traffic of many webbrowsers (not only MSIE/Edge) and check downloaded fieles too.

There is a document on the MS support site that teaches how to report a false positive to Microsoft or how to disable the Smartscreen filter (in case that you already installed a virustool):

https://support.microsoft.com/

Best regards
Christian

ChristianK

New: Hiking Symbols [osmc:symbols] in OpenAndroMaps

/0 Comments/in , /by

Most of the hiking symbols tagged in OpenAndroMaps are now included in the OpenAndroMaps.
Redering of these symbols follow the rules of  Waymarkedtrails .

Important: If more than one route is assigned to a way : The waymark for the route with the highest priority is rendered = iwn, nwn, rwn, lwn.

Please download the latest maps and the latest version of the Elevate rendertheme and activate the rendering of the hiking symbols in your APP.
in the Elevate theme the background symbols appear at zoom-level 13, the whole symbols (background,foreground,text) appear at zoom-level 15.

Canary Islands

Further details and rules for osmc:symbols at OpenAndroMaps can be found here

ChristianK

Laser (LIDAR) Elevation-Data for Austria und South-Tyrol

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Austria and South Tyrol has finished the LIDAR Laserscans and released this dataset to the public for free.
@Sonny converted it to usual hgt files and published it for download:

http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-austria
http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-german
http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-slovenia
http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-spain

For the OpenAndroMaps this means that serveral Maps benefit from these new elevation data, and believe me – the difference is incredible.

  • Austria
  • Alps (Austria und South Tyrol)
  • Alps_Ost
  • Italy (South Tyrol)
  • Berlin, RheinlandPfalz
  • Slovenia
  • Spain

I strongly recommend you to update these maps, especially if you are a mountain hikers or MTB enthusiast.

Here in this Thread you can see examples of various tiles [DE]