OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap NextGen Development Diary #18 — Significant Progress
Posted by NorthCrab on 18 October 2024 in English.Welcome to the latest OpenStreetMap-NG development update! Since last time, we’ve made significant progress towards reaching feature parity and have also implemented some great, exclusive new features. There’s also an updated roadmap with more detailed public release progress.
🔖 You can read other development diaries here:
@NorthCrab/diary/
⭐ This project is open-source — join us today:
https://github.com/openstreetmap-ng/openstreetmap-ng
🛈 This initiative is not affiliated with the OpenStreetMap Foundation.
📹 Video Summary
I’ve prepared a video summary, where I recap the recent progress and show it off directly on the development website. It’s an alternative and richer version of this diary post. The recording contains chapter information if you’re interested in just some parts of this diary. There’s also a video-exclusive feature highlight :-)
⬇ Click below to play ⬇
or click here: https://peertube.monicz.dev/w/qWPQ8tNQK5VrGENPvpqnR1
OAuth2 Reimagined
Completion of the OAuth2 feature marks very significant progress towards reaching feature parity. The interface has been refreshed and streamlined. The OAuth2 implementation has been prepared in such a way that it’s easy to extend and work on in the future. For example, today we announce the introduction of the Personal Access Tokens (PATs) system, which is heavily based on the underlying OAuth2 infrastructure with minimal code additions (highlighted later in this diary).
Tags Diff Mode
One of the main goals of the OpenStreetMap-NG project is to make moderation and changes review easier. We’re pleased to announce the new Tags Diff Mode that makes it easy to review tagging changes over time - integrated directly into the element history view. We’ll work on further expanding this functionality in the future.
Personal Access Tokens
Personal Access Tokens (PATs) provide a simple way of authenticating with the API for personal projects, not requiring full OAuth authorization flow. This can include small scripts, personal monitoring tools, and others. They provide minimal barriers to OpenStreetMap API programming, with an easy path to upgrade to classic OAuth2 auth flow if needed. It’s a popular solution in the world of public APIs.
High-Resolution Feature Icons
We’ve achieved a notable milestone of improving the resolution of feature icons in the project. The rendered icons are now suitable for 4K displays and will no longer appear blurry. This change enabled us to add a feature icon to the header of the element page - making it even easier to quickly distinguish object types.
Updated Roadmap
With the rising interest in the project, we’ve revised our roadmap to focus on reaching feature parity, achieving which will allow us to confidently set up a public testing instance of the project. We estimate completing the roadmap this year.
🌠 Sponsors
This work was sponsored by 16 people.
8 donors on Liberapay, and 8 on GitHub Sponsors.
Thank you for making it happen!!
Discussion
Comment from Hedaja on 18 October 2024 at 19:25
Really awesome to see the progress. Can’t wait to get my hands on a live demo and play around with it (even through it would probably be though to go back to the current page again)
Comment from Hedaja on 18 October 2024 at 19:28
One thing I was wondering. You said/wrote that you are using high-res icons. Is there a reason not to use svg icons? Definitely great to see additional ones as well since this is super helpful when reviewing changesets.
Comment from NorthCrab on 18 October 2024 at 19:45
@Hedaja Awesome to hear that!
We now actually use SVGs, but they are rasterized before being shown on the website (at a resolution we see fit). Previously, many icons didn’t have an SVG counterpart and were low-res, so this wasn’t possible to do. The actual work item was to create SVGs for them.
Why not just SVGs? Rasterized images are minimally larger in file size but noticeably improve website responsiveness as they are faster to render. SVGs are computationally expensive for the clients, which matters even more when you have lots of them.
Comment from Hedaja on 18 October 2024 at 19:54
Thank you for the explanation. Very insightful and definetly a good point.
Comment from Koreller on 19 October 2024 at 11:17
This project is really amazing! I love the approach and the UI and UX questions you’re asking. I think your questions are very good and you’ve answered them in a great way.
Can’t wait to see the next improvements!
Comment from philippec on 21 October 2024 at 23:37
I wait for the tag diff mode. You could also look at how online stores do it.