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OpenStreetMap's New Vector Tiles

(tech.marksblogg.com)
479 points marklit | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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Someone ◴[] No.42183666[source]
> Imagery should appear much sharper and switching the language of the labels should become possible.

I expect that to work sub-optimally. Label dimensions are far from guaranteed to stay the same if you change language, and label dimensions interact with map layout, even influencing what to show.

If your labels grow larger, they may end up covering too much of the map or even overlapping. If they grow smaller, users may wonder why a city that was omitted before because of space constraints doesn’t show in the empty space created.

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dheera ◴[] No.42183722[source]
I hate it when city and street names disappear on Google Maps as you zoom in and out. Sometimes a street or business name only appears at one particular zoom level and not higher or lower. Just show the name of every street damnit. I don't care about crowding. Standing at an intersection staring at an unlabelled map is a useless map.
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tacker2000 ◴[] No.42188951[source]
I also hate it! I dont know why they do it, sometimes i zoom in all the way and there is still no street name. Its just silly, who is making these design decisions?

The problem is, i keep using maps because google has the best POI system/database around, and it will take other apps long yo beat it, even apples POIs cant hold up…

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1. stephen_g ◴[] No.42189636[source]
I often use Google Maps to search for PoIs and opening hours since their data is so good, but often once I know where the place is I'll switch over to Apple Maps to navigate (partially because it just feels like Google's doing a lot more creepy tracking).

But yeah, add a third "hell yes" to hating not being able to see street names. I wonder if some of it is cultural differences - the maps apps seem really insistent that I can always see things like highway numbers and route numbers, which we have, but apart from major motorways (e.g. "M2") we don't really use any of those at all and refer to streets by their actual name. I wonder if it's more common to refer to numbered routes more in the US, and the apps are geared that way because of it?