[Qgis-developer] [info] openstreetmap shapefile data

[Niccolo Rigacci]

On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 04:30:08AM -0700, kimaidou wrote:
> 
> You say that the osm format is well documented. Why not creating a special
> wiki page on this topic ?

Yes, I will try to add my experience from OSM/Josm.
Where to host the page? Let's start!

> - provide some quick access list (2 levels : continent --> countries)

The server limits what the user can download at a time, forget to 
download an entire country at once :-)

> * let the user select the features he wants to download (only primary road,
> only footpahs..)

I disagree. There is not an OSM "feature set", tags are free. You 
just download object inside the BBOX and their tags.

> * transform the osm data into ogr format ?
> Q/R : - in which format : gml (well documented, xml), shapefile, kml ?)
> - Don't know how the geometries are managed under osm : simple and complex
> ones (polygon with holes, multigeom, etc.) --> Is there a total
> compatibility, or do we need to convert some geometries in others ?

Just points and lines (which are collection of points) with 
attributes. The only problem I can foresee are "relations" which 
essentialy are sets of objects (point and/or lines) with 
attributes associated with the relation.

With relations we can handle several thigs, like a bounch of road 
segments which share the road name (relation's attribute) but 
have different speed limit (line's attribute), etc.

-- 
Niccolo Rigacci
Firenze - Italy