Showing all lines to one stop_area instead of onet stop_position

[Tobias Johansson]

Nice work with the app.
One thing that I would like to see is that when selecting a public transport line you can see the stops that that line stops at and the connecting lines at that stop, but the lines shown seems to only be tha lines that have the same stop_poistion in OSM the different stop positions shoiuld be “bound” together with a stop_area relation in OSM. And it would be nice to see all lines that stop at that area instead.

[BuckyE]

Dear Tobias,

Thanks for bringing this up. I also want to see all the interconnections. That’s so necessary for really being able to use Public Transport.

I’d also like to be able to see all the lines there are at once, to get an overall view of what’s available!

Yours,
Bucky

[nounours]

Yes, yes.
There must be a very long post of me about this some months ago. Completely agree.
Just keep in mind:
=> PE must distinguish between bus lines stoping at THIS stop, and bus lines stopping at this stop AREA. Ifnot, one will maybe stand there for hours waiting for the number 9, not realising that it stops just around the corner.
=> I think I suggest something like: highlighting all the lines stopping in this area, showing only the lines on this stop in the info on the top, and in the info screen making two sections: A. “bus lines at this stop”, B. “Other lines in this stop area” or something simiar.

Another important addition:

If one (or several) bus lines are selected, they should be “sticky“. That means, not being desactivated if I click on something else. I happens to me 19 times out of twenty, and it’s very anoying: I want to follow the bus line, and move the screen, I hit by error another POI, and the bus line has gone. How to select it again? No clue. So I move back where I originally was, an start over.
Or, I did not higlight the restaurant I want to go to. I select the bus line, follow it, and do not see exactly which was the restaurant I want to go to. So I click the restaurant POI to read the name, and … puff, the bus line is gone.
=> so make it sticky!!!! it stays, till I select it again and actively close it. (I’m convinced this makes sense for all cases, but maybe you see other cases???).

[BuckyE]

Dear nounours,

As stated many, many times, my solution to “stickiness” is very simply to make Transport Subcategories Map Layers that can be enabled/disabled. So that they are on, or not.

And really, Map Layers should be eliminated and rolled into the Search function, but no one wants to hear me go over that again!

So, my idea is that “bus lines stoping at THIS stop, and bus lines stopping at this stop AREA.” should be irrelevant: give me a way to show all the bus lines; with icons for connecting stops, etc. on my current map. I can then scroll, tap, do whatever I want with impunity, including tapping bus stops for schedules or whatever other Info can be shown for them.

When I’m finished figuring out my route, I can Hide/Disable Transport > Bus Lines. Easy!

Yours,
Bucky

[nounours]

🙂
sorry to disagree.
Map Layers are necessary, and different than searching.
Map Layers is how the map looks. Search is for looking for something specifc.
I do not want to see everything.
If I see everything, the map gets unreadable. If I see all the buslines in a city, nothing else will be visible anymore.
If you show all the lines, nobody will understand anymore where the bus stops. That’s why the public transporters are making schematic drawings, not maps.

Why?
I’m sitting in a restaurant, getting drunk, and start to wonder how far the next bus station is – I do not want to fiddle with my map settings. They are normally constant. (yes, better several name set of preferences, but that’s another story …).

Apparently, you don’t think this way. There are some others that do like you (there was a post recently), but I think most people are very much in line with the concept of map layers (OsmAnd e.g. on Android is just the same …).

cheers, nounours

[BuckyE]

Dear nounours,

You raise an interesting question! But, if you don’t mind my saying so to a long time pal like you, who makes me think, I kind of feel the original question of stickiness is being lost. And stickiness is wrapped up with Layers and Search. And, because you make me think, and because I appreciate that, I’m going to try to Reply to both your original request for Transport Stickiness and your latest post, all in one. With the basic proposition being that I don’t think it’s fair, or useful, or, it would be confusing, to make one certain Category (e.g. a Transport Layer) sticky, while others are not.

Map Layers are necessary, and different than searching.
Well, sorry, not in practical terms, no.

Map Layers is how the map looks. Search is for looking for something specific.
These two things are the same. “How the map looks” is the same as saying “These are the specific things this current map shows.” Obviously, every map can show or not show a thousand, a million categories of stuff. PE doesn’t currently show topo lines, or shaded relief. It does (because of the OSM data) a really terrible job of naming watercourses. It doesn’t have text labels for mountain ranges. It doesn’t do a very good job of labeling administrative sub-boundaries. When it zooms out, it loses town names that I would like to still be able to see. I could go on and on, but these examples will, I hope, prove my point: every “look” of a map shows “something(s) (that are) specific. Towns, river names, etc., etc.

I do not want to see everything.
Of course not, you want to see what you want to see, at the moment you are viewing the map. And that desire will change every time you look at the map. From one view to the next, you might always want to see traffic lights. One time out of 10 you might want to see POIs for restaurants. I always want to see watercourse names. You want one thing; I want another; some times you want A, sometimes you want B. Sometimes you want A, B and C. Sometimes you want A & C. etc.

If I see everything, the map gets unreadable.
Of course. A map with the capabilities of PE is almost infinite.

If I see all the buslines in a city, nothing else will be visible anymore.
Well, now, my drinking friend–and I’m hoisting one in your honor as I type–given that buslines follow city streets, what you would see is the streets in color(s). I certainly agree, if your map was showing every existing POI, and thousands of Pins, then the map becomes chaos. But that’s just an argument for a convenient way to pick and choose what to see. As in, “Search.”

If you show all the lines, nobody will understand anymore where the bus stops.
Not if, as currently, there are little gray circles for the stops.

That’s why the public transporters are making schematic drawings, not maps.
Not at all. When Harry Beck designed his London Tube “map” in 1931, the intent was to show the connections between lines. In other words, to show how the Tube worked. He very deliberately divorced the diagram from a map. From Wikipedia: “He believed that passengers riding the Underground were not too bothered about geographical accuracy, and were more interested in how to get from one station to another and where to change trains.” (In my view, a hideous and useless mistake. But I’m an old curmudgeon!) In his diagram, nobody who didn’t already know where the stops are were could possibly see the stops as they existed “on the ground.” This might be fine for people who live in a city, but for tourists it’s worse than useless: it purports to show a map, without giving them (me, us) any idea where the d*mn stations are in any kind of relation to where we are, or want to go.

The current tourist handout Maps/Diagrams for the New York subway are a hybrid. Look at http://web.mta.info/maps/submap.html. Granted, the underlying map is diagrammatic, it is not a perfect UTM projection of Manhattan. But still, there is a rudimentary map under the subway (tube/metro/underground) routes.

Why?
I’m sitting in a restaurant, getting drunk, and start to wonder how far the next bus station is – I do not want to fiddle with my map settings. They are normally constant. (yes, better several name set of preferences, but that’s another story …).
I agree entirely. If I want the POIs for transport to be visible, they should be visible when I want them to be. But that is not an argument for Permanent Map Layers. That is merely an argument for Search Categories to be easily made visible (and perhaps, stick), until easily dismissed/turned off.

And, if you want to see Bus Stops and Lines, why not, when a particular POI for a Bus Stop is tapped, show all the lines? How often does it occur that you can be sitting in the Hofbräuhaus, see that there is a Bus Stop around the corner, and have that one Bus Line take you directly to your hotel? Lucky you if that’s the case! (Myself, I’d be looking for taxi stands!) So, if you have Enabled Transport > Bus Lines in a previous Search, and they stay Enabled (until you Disable them) and you tap the stop around the corner from your watering hole, why not have all the lines show up? With the relevant markers showing connections?

Apparently, you don’t think this way. There are some others that do like you (there was a post recently), but I think most people are very much in line with the concept of map layers (OsmAnd e.g. on Android is just the same …).
I’m also very, very much in favor of “layers/categories” of information being definable. The more fine-grained the better. But the point under discussion is Stickiness. So, if Bus Lines are going to be sticky, shouldn’t Restaurants be sticky? My wife and friends and I are sitting at the café, deciding where to go for supper. I tap one restaurant, it looks interesting, but see another a block away. I tap the second one…Ahem. Does the first one stick? Or not? That way lies map developer madness.

Unless, of course, all Layers/Categories are sticky. But then what happens to the Info Window? Does it list all currently tapped items? That might not be bad. A h*ll of a new paradigm, though.

In short, I’d say it’s easier and more convenient to eliminate Map Layers in the Settings Menu, to make Search sticky, with the option to deliberately disable/Hide a previous Search result. I think something like that is coming up!

Your friend, Bucky Edgett

[MikeB]

While I am quite happy with the new public transport application in Pocket Earth, I usually bring along with me bus schedules and a bus network map. While some bus stops in Pocket Earth include the bus number, many do not. And none of them include bus schedules.

Many of the local bus companies in Europe include quite a lot of downloadable information (in pdf format) that you can easily store and use on your iPhone without roaming charges. Here, for example, is the bus company I used a couple of weeks ago for our holiday in France: http://www.zestbus.fr/

They have a network map and the bus line schedules actually are better on pdf than on paper (they include a map showing all the stops, the paper schedule does not). Although my French is not very good, there are only a few words you need to know (in other languages as well) in order to find the needed information.

I know a site that includes links to all public transport companies in Europe. If anyone needs that, let me know and I’ll post the link.

[nounours]

Yes, you are right.
Public transport information in OSM still needs a lot of work.
There is a group working on that, but progress is very slow: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-transit

In OSM, there should be:
* stops and stations and related infos
* lines and routes and related information

Not in OSM:
* time tables
* real time schedule infos.

=> this should be on the gtfs-exchange site: http://www.gtfs-data-exchange.com

Links to websites of public transport companies and/or pdf-timetables may or maynot be included in OSM. I sometimes do if I feel that the data is otherwise not accessible (e.g. for small buses in the mountains which are not on the main timetable sites), but do not so by default, because it will be too difficult to keep that all updated.

All that said, Public transport has a long way to go. In a ideal world, PE would use the OSM data for stops and lines, and connect it to time table and real time schedule information from other sources. I think Geomagik is sharing this view, and PE will surely evole in this direction, in parallel with data avaiblity on the gtfs site.

I currently have a project with a regional public transport operator in Switzerland, which wants to help to make this data avaible, and I hope others will do the same. I think this is the most efficent way to progress: make public transport companies make aware of the importance of sharing their data with the OpenData Community.

As a short time fix maybe it would be an idea to download pdf’s associated with a busstop or a busline? There is currently no official tagging for that, but I could easily suggest one to the PublicTransport group, like “timetable=pdf-url”.

@Geomagik: you much work would it be to follow these links, download them, and show the pdf offline? Maybe to much data-bandwith and data-storing consuming?

n.

[nounours]

@Bucky

Thanks very much for your long and carefully worked out answer.

Hmmmmm. You make me think.

Maybe you’re right.

But only, IF searches are sticky!!! If there is only one search result, and then another, it does not work. But if there are several (infinite) search results that exist in parallel, yes, … so the current maplayers are nothing else then as a predefined search result (e.g. the “accomodation” layer is just the search “hotel or hostel or apartement or …”). Conceptually, this might be a good way both to make it more easy and understandable, and adding the flexibility we want from the map layout.

Im hearing Abe saying: it’s not possible, and I understand: Search does not have a zoom layer in yet – if I search for restaurants, I want to see them. With map layers, every item has also a zoom level where it will start (or stop) to show.
And a search is (currently) limited in radius, where as map layers are not. I think there might be a performenc issue behind this …

Anyway, I think we should mark your post as instructive think-it-over for future developpement with PE.

thanks a lot for it!!

Nounours

[nounours]

@Bucky

Thanks very much for your long and carefully worked out answer.

Hmmmmm. You make me think.

Maybe you’re right.

But only, IF searches are sticky!!! If there is only one search result, and then another, it does not work. But if there are several (infinite) search results that exist in parallel, yes, … so the current maplayers are nothing else then as a predefined search result (e.g. the “accomodation” layer is just the search “hotel or hostel or apartement or …”). Conceptually, this might be a good way both to make it more easy and understandable, and adding the flexibility we want from the map layout.

Im hearing Abe saying: it’s not possible, and I understand: Search does not have a zoom layer in yet – if I search for restaurants, I want to see them. With map layers, every item has also a zoom level where it will start (or stop) to show.
And a search is (currently) limited in radius, where as map layers are not. I think there might be a performenc issue behind this …

Anyway, I think we should mark your post as instructive think-it-over for future developpement with PE.

thanks a lot for it!!

Nounours

[BuckyE]

Dear nounours,

Thank you very much for your thoughtful response. I think you’re beginning to see–and telling me where I’m wrong!–my overall idea for what I’d call the My Map System.

“If there is only one search result, and then another, it does not work. “
Of course. That would violate the concept of Stickiness.

“the current maplayers are nothing else then as a predefined search result (e.g. the “accomodation” layer is just the search “hotel or hostel or apartement or …”)”
Yes! Yes, yes, yes. Except that, the Map Layers as they exist have no sub-categories. I’ll elaborate as we go on, but, just as an example, there has never been, and I’m sure there will, in my use of PE, never be, a time when I want to see all the POIs for the Map Layer “Driving.”

In Search, I can display/Find Fuel Stations, Parking, Car Wash, Car Rental, etc. etc. When I’m using my map, I might want to see one of those Sub-categories. Just in this random example I might want to see at the most two: Fuel Stations and Parking. On the map I’m currently viewing.

Please remember that I’m using PE as a traveler. If I’m an American in the wilds of rural France, I want to see what fuel stations might be somewhere “nearish” me at the moment; whether I need to take a highway to get to one; if there’s a reasonably straight-line route available. By looking at the map. I want to have the visible, zoomable map continue to show me Fuel Stations as I zoom it.

“Search does not have a zoom layer in yet – if I search for restaurants, I want to see them. With map layers, every item has also a zoom level where it will start (or stop) to show.”
Yes, and I hate that. If, in another example, I’m interested in pizza joints, and see on my map that’s there’s a block over there that has so many pizza joints on it that the icons are covering each other, that’s information. I want to see that riot of icons: it immediately say: “Pizza joints here!” If I zoom out, to look at an area few blocks or even miles larger, why would I want the pizza joint icons to disappear? Maybe I’ll see an even bigger cluster; maybe I’ll se a place by the river side, and decide “Hey, riverside, I’ll take my chances there.” This business of showing and disappearing at zoom levels makes no sense to me.

It’s purely and only a clumsy developer solution to the perceived –not actual– problem of having too many POIs show up/overlap/obscure each other because, as implemented now, Map Layers are too crude/inclusive/not finely divisible enough to truly customize My Map. I think Sticky Searches would solve the problem in one fell swoop. Except that,,,

“And a search is (currently) limited in radius, where as map layers are not. I think there might be a performenc issue behind this …”
Well, that may be. I’m not by any means the expert here. I kind of think that, if PE is able to perform with every (current) Map Layer enabled, then there shouldn’t be a problem with turning “ultimately fined grained map layers/POIs/Pins” on and off as I want them to be. That’s all I want: control over what shows at the moment I’m viewing a map. At any zoom level. Whether it makes icons mush together or not.

<hr />

I think there’s a basic disconnect between my idea and the developers’ idea of how a digital map should work/display. The concept of “map layers” arises from infrastructure. In the days of printed maps, maps showed roads, town names, rivers with labels, etc. It wasn’t possible to show and label every restaurant, hair salon, etc. That was partly because the map would be too cluttered, and partly because the finer-grained information changed too often.

Of course, if I bought a Series Blue or Ordinance Survey 1:2,500 scale map, yes, I would (I still will!) see individual buildings, historical markers, Roman bridges, etc, etc. But I won’t see businesses, because the map makers know in a year or two the maps will be outdated. OK, fine. So, historically, there has been a division between “infrastucture/permanent stuff” and ephemeral stuff. Sadly, PE is still trying to follow this paradigm.

In PE, Map Layers are trying to show “infrastructure/permanent stuff”: roads, administrative boundaries, traffic lights, bridges, trails, etc. But Map Layers are also mistakenly showing/hiding ephemera: Food and Drink, Accommodation, etc.

[BuckyE]

Guess I overstayed my welcome! To continue,,,

It might be useful to have Map Layers deal with truly permanent infrastructure, and Search with ephemera. But even there, I’m not convinced. There are times I’d like to see local roads at a higher zoom level, times I’d like to just de-clutter my map and not show them at all. There have been posts asking for the ability to show/hide traffic lights. I couldn’t care less about traffic lights, but someone did! So, just in general, I’d prefer to have all categories of information be Shown/Hidden through a “Search-like” function, and be sticky until Hidden.

But there’s another level of the concept of Stickiness, and the second level will probably open the question of performance.

My concept, as outlined above, is that First-Level Stickiness is merely the ability to Show/Hide all categories+subcategories+sub-sub-categories (including Transport and the associated Route Lines) individually, Showing until checked as Hidden.

However, that does not address the concept of touching an individual icon (which would include icons for Bus Stops, Metro Stations, etc.) and having some information appear for that icon. In the simple case of ephemera (POIs, Pins) it should be possible to touch one, have its Info Window open; touch another, have the Info window display the second icon’s info; leaving both icons highlighted. In that case, it would be necessary to re-touch an icon and deliberately close the/its Info window to de-highlight it. Which would leave the Info window open for the last touched icon. Whew! Now we’re into performance issues!

But how to treat public transport lines? As is, touching a stop icon Shows the Line. Would we need to re-touch the Line to Hide the Line? What if a POI/Pin icon was near the Line? How would PE discriminate the touch?

So there are still issues to deal with! I say, the best way to cut the Gordian Knot is simply to eliminate the current icons for Stops. Make Public Transport a “Search = Show/Hide” function, like Map Layers, like I would want all categories of information to work, in the finest-grained sub-(sub-sub-sub etc.) categorized way possible (given OSM’s posibilities).

While the Bus Lines are showing, touching a stop would bring u its information in the Info Window. (The same way touching a Pub Icon does.) Touching another Stop Icon would bring up its info. Using the New Search = Show/Hide function in the Side Menu would allow me to Hide Bus Lines.

Perhaps not as simple as currently, where Stops show depending on the Map Layer enabled, but to my mind, if I’m not interested in using Public Transport, why have the stops Showing, cluttering my map? How is it more difficult to use a Search = show/hide function than to go into Settings > Map Layers to Show/Hide them?

Just a thought! Thanks for thinking about this stuff!

[nounours]

Just in short:

Yes! Yes, yes, yes. Except that, the Map Layers as they exist have no sub-categories. I’ll elaborate as we go on, but, just as an example, there has never been, and I’m sure there will, in my use of PE, never be, a time when I want to see all the POIs for the Map Layer “Driving.”

Again, completely agree. Geomagik and me (and probably someone else) have been discussing this a lot. Obviously, map layers should have subcategories (and they probably will soon), and probably the two systems (in map layers and in search) should be structured the same way. Geomagik promised to implement this, but as far as I see, for historical reasons, this is not so simple.
(If they have the same structure, why keep them seperarate you ask) … and so on 🙂

[BuckyE]

Dear nounours,

Thanks for continuing to listen to my rants. You’re a good friend!

I can absolutely understand the old-time-static-map vs nifty-digital-searching paradigm. And imagine how it developed into the current bifurcated system. But it’s cooked deeply into the code, and how to improve it…well…

I’m glad it’s not my job to figure out how to deal with it. Changes would never get made!

Yours,
Bucky

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