WalkLakes

By pwb999 on 27/05/19 at 1:53pm

It was only recently that I noticed that both stiles and gates were shown on the OSM maps. However they have been rendered in a very small font and are not therefore very prominent. Considering these features are extremely useful for walkers is there any way they could be available as a separate layer in the same way that Benchmarks and Peaks are available so that the user could overlay the stiles/gates on any map tile. An alternative method is to render these at a larger scale within OSM in much the same fashion as Toasty Talker TT50 OSM maps are displayed which gives much more prominence to this Stiles/Gate Feature than the normal display in OpenStreetMap website itself.

Would it be possible to think about this idea??

Thanks Peter B.

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By beth on 28/05/19 at 11:52am

I assume you are referring to our WayMaps tiles? Whilst we use some OSM data we also use a lot of OS OpenData and other OGL datasets to produce WayMaps. It's by no means an OSM map and should not be referred to as such.

Stiles and gates I can increase the size, currently there were left as implemented in OSM style sheets. Stiles are a png image and the font size for kissing gates are consistent with that. I'll add it to the todo list.

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By pwb999 on 30/05/19 at 3:16pm

Thanks for the response. I think the change in font size would be beneficial as it would assist in quickly confirming my position on one of the routes that you have created. Is there any reason gates/stiles/kissinggates are not shown on OS maps? Clutter perhaps?

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By beth on 31/05/19 at 6:12am

Is there any reason gates/stiles/kissinggates are not shown on OS maps? Clutter perhaps?

OS mostly use aerial photography rather than feet on the ground and there'd be no-way to discern such small features accurately. Clutter is another problem. Make the icon or whatever large enough to read at a glance and they bleed over a road when it should be next to it - eg a residential road looks like it has 3 gates across it when in reality the gates are at the side leading to a track or path.

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By TallPaul on 05/06/19 at 9:50am (last edited 05/06/19 at 10:17am)

Thanks for the feedback . We've just put online a new release of WayMaps with updated marking of stiles, gates, and kissing gates. See here for details, including a rather cool slider to let you view the changes side by side .

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By pwb999 on 07/06/19 at 12:38pm

Thanks Paul and Beth for this change. I have just followed Beths guide to walk her Wansfell Pike/Troutbeck etc route. This route has a lot of gates especially on its southern side so its really nice to now see the various stiles and gates along that circular route far more easily. I think other walkers would benefit too from these changes. Also I have found it quite easy to add any new additions to OSM using their in-browser editor ID. I hope that others will think about updating OSM themselves as its another way to use all that data stored in any GPX files. Once again, brilliant service. Best regards, Peter B.

TallPaul likes this post

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Stiles and Gates - could this be available as a separate feature layer in future?