Here's a summary of how you can maintain geographical features using the programs on this website.
Main and personal data
A key distinction is between the central feature database I maintain on this site, and the personal data which others maintain
- central database: the route lines and Points of Interest (POI) displayed on this website are stored in a central database (SQLite, accessed geographically via Featureserver). I maintain this centrally and only I have the rights to maintain this data. However, I certainly don't have the time or knowledge to set up all this data myself, so it is mainly taken from data that others have entered, and copied into this database in a standard format
- personal data: most people use one of two methods to create geographical data
- go out in the field with a GPS device and record the track or points
- use one of the software programs available on the web, such as Google Maps/Earth, to trace the route or points over the maps/photos available in these programs. This is typically stored either in a Google Earth file (kml/kmz) or in Google's MyMaps facility
Adding your data to my central database
If you have data, whether route lines or POI, you would like to be included, please contact me with a copy of the file or url, and I will include it in the database if appropriate. I use the GPSBabel program to convert the myriad of different GPS formats into more standard formats such as GPX or KML. You could install and use this program yourself if you prefer, or there is an online version at GPS Visualizer.
Creating data
If you would like to create data yourself, you can use either GPS or Google Earth/MyMaps (go to Google Maps and click on the 'My Maps' option). Google's programs are limited to their basemaps/photos, but you can also trace the routes/POI over any of the topographical map bases on this site, storing the results in your Google MyMaps area. To do this, go to my MyMaps maintenance program; this uses Google's Maps Data API to access your MyMaps area.
Feature style
- route lines: my program for displaying these uses blue by default but, because no colour is ideally suited for all backgrounds, you can change this with the palette option
- POI icons: my program for displaying these uses these icons by default and also divides them into different categories: Accommodation, Food/drink, Notable buildings, Transport, Others. In order for this to work, the attributes 'type' and 'category' have to be set on each feature (if you pick type from the dropdown list, category will be assigned automatically). Any feature without the type attribute will be displayed as a blue dot
- MyMaps: by default, my MyMaps maintenance program uses the Google MyMaps style for both lines and icons; you can however change this to use my defaults as above by adding '?gstyle=n' to the URL, for example, http://maps.peterrobins.co.uk/osm/mymaps/<userid>/<mapid>.html?gstyle=n
Feature description
If features are created using Google Earth/MyMaps, they can have a description field; if so, my programs will display this as an attribute. This is however specific to the user creating the feature and cannot be amended/improved by anyone else, so the preferred way of storing descriptive information is to put it in the Pilgrim Wiki which my programs can then fetch when requested. For this to work, each feature, whether line segment or point, should have its own page in the wiki; this page title is then entered as the wiki attribute for the feature, so the program knows which page to fetch when the line or point icon is clicked. For example, the description of the albergue in Hospital de Bruma is on the wiki page http://www.caminodesantiago.me/camino-wiki/index.php?title=Hospital_de_Bruma so entering 'Hospital_de_Bruma' as the wiki attribute tells the program to fetch this page. If you would like to improve any page in the wiki, just log in and edit the page; when you have saved your changes, my program will fetch the changed page.
Improving/correcting/updating features in my database
If you would like to improve the lines or POI in my current database, or correct some errors, please let me know, and I'll send you a kml file of the feature(s) which you can load into your MyMaps area and amend. When you are finished, let me know again, and I'll copy your amended version into the database. I prefer to do it this way rather than allow everyone to change the database directly, not because I think people will deliberately screw things up, but because it is all too easy to amend or delete the wrong feature by mistake (hey, I've done it myself :-) ).
Reading other people's MyMaps
If you know the userid and mapid of someone else's MyMap, you can display it over any of the mapbases in this site by using my 'theirmap' program. For this to work, the MyMap owner should set it to be api-visible, which they can do using my MyMaps maintenance program (under 'change attributes'). Then the MyMap can be viewed using a url in the format http://maps.peterrobins.co.uk/<mapbase>/theirmap/<userid>/<mapid>.html - for example http://maps.peterrobins.co.uk/f/theirmap/203028019182702987599/00047d2774bcd420f434e.html will display one of user 203028019182702987599's MyMaps on the French IGN mapbase; changing, for example, 'f' to 'osm' will display the same map on OpenStreetMap. As with the MyMaps maintenance program, you can add '?gstyle=n' to the URL to use my styling rather than that in MyMaps.