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Purpose of osm-icons.orgThe main purpose of osm-icons.org is providing a set of icons including key-value pairs suitable to be used in OSM editors. In addition, the icons can be used for any kind of OSM maps for displaying POIs. Aiming to compile a complete set of OSM POI iconsDuring the planning of a new Android software I discovered that on the various maps as well as in various OSM editors like JOSM, Vespucci etc. the number of map features supported by pre-sets including the available icons is limited. As a side effect I also discovered, that the selection of pre-sets in editors like JOSM seems to have a serious influence on the number of occurrences of a certain map feature in the planet file. But this is another topic to do some more research... I then did some research regarding the availability of icons for OSM map features and found, that currently no collection of icons with a homogeneous style exists that covers at least all map features which are present in the OSM planet file at minimum 1,000 times. While researching the currently available icon sets I found, that the icons originally designed by SJJB would be the best starting point for creating a complete set of icons. I then researched with the help of the wonderful TAGINFO service which icons with at least 1,000 occurrences in the OSM planet file were missing in the SJJB collection and finally added to the originally 302 SJJB SVG icons more than 700 newly designed or optimized SVG icons, sometimes based on existing ideas, sometimes with completely new motives. License information for each icon can be found in the grid with all icons. To each icon I assigned a randomly selected unique 5-digit icon number which can be found on the left side of the icon file name. Recommended keys and presets for each map featureAfter creating a set of more than 1,000 icons in total I added to each map feature, represented by an icon, recommended key-value pairs and presets for some values. These key-value pairs were stored in the file name of the icon for as easy as possible handling. While compiling the relevant keys and values for each icon I found, that some information is needed repeatedly for multiple icons. Feature groupsIt might be pretty time consuming to find the correct icon out of > 1,000 icons while mapping a certain map feature. Example: woman’s fav places I created a set of feature groups and assigned icons to them. The feature groups assigned to each icon are mentioned in the respective file name. Request for cross check by the OSM communitySome days ago I completed the task of compiling key-value pairs and feature groups for each map feature after some initial very valuable feedback from the Italian OSM community, so it is now the right time to ask interested OSM community members to cross check the work done for an optimal icon set / tag assignment as follows:
The benefit of the OSM community of this work will be, that it becomes much easier for developers of OSM editors providing support for all map features widely used by the OSM community. This means, that these developers can then focus on implementing their software instead of hazzling around with icons. In case you have suggestions for improving the icons, assigned key-value pairs, presets of values or feature groups, please send an email to Markus. The .zip file with all 1,000 icons as well as the .txt files with the commonly used key-value pairs can be found here. |