Admin borders look like paths

[matthijsmelissen]

For someone not familiar with the style, it is really hard to distinguish paths and admin borders.

Example area: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/49.60996/6.14509

It would be hard to understand for somebody that he can follow the blue, but not the purple dotted lines.

[mboeringa]

I am not sure if I agree here. Yes, this lower level admin border, with its simple dotted line rendering, looks a bit like a path. Usually, in real printed maps, border lines are some kind of mix of long and short dashes, and possibly dots. But I guess with so many admin levels, possibilities are exhausted.

However, since this particular color is consistently used for all admin borders, including the easily recognizable ones like country or municipal borders that people are familiar with, and the fact that all admin borders have a distinct type of labelling with the names of the "regions" drawn on both side of the lines, I think it is recognizable.

In addition, these borders tend to take, or may take, "unusual" paths, like going straight through a building or crossing major roads like motorways or primaries without connecting, clearly signifying them as something peculiar like borders.

And at some point, users will simply need to become familiar with a style. Maybe we need a "map" equivalent of RTFM: RTFL(egend) ;-)

[matkoniecz]

Potential solution is to make cycleways and footways continous/dashed, not dotted.

[matthijsmelissen]

Would something like this help?

@RAytoun Do you have any opinion on this issue?

[RAytoun]

Hi,
Admin boundaries are a part of the Cadastral range of symbols which are
always going to be a problem overlaying the map base.
Set aside for admin is a range of line and dot symbols with a transparent
screen background highlight to make underlying features still visible. The
line symbol can be black or purple with red purple or light green highlight.
The line starts with International which would be a bold pecked line (Long
dash followed by three shorter dashes) and next level down would be a less
bold line with same pattern of pecks but with dots instead of short dashes)
Next level would contain One long and two short. The linework would be
positioned along the actual border.
The transparent background highlight can be straddling the line as a
highlight or to one side of the line.
I have attached some quick scans (that I was able to lay my hands on
straight away) to illustrate my meaning but not that I am intending them to
be used as such.
I can put together some better examples if need be. Let me know.

On 30 January 2015 at 13:28, math1985 [email protected] wrote:

Would something like this help?
[image: screenshot from 2015-01-30 13 27 41]
https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/5251909/5976269/c8cb93de-a883-11e4-94ff-5a5d7095049e.png

@RAytoun https://github.com/RAytoun Do you have any opinion on this
issue?

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#1248 (comment)
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[gravitystorm]

@RAytoun I don't understand what you are referring to - it sounds like you are referring to a particular list of guidelines for someone else's cartography, but I don't know what makes you think they'd apply to us?

[neiljp]

+1 for @math1985 transparent purple addition; not sure what anyone else thinks, or how that scales to different levels and zooms?

[matthijsmelissen]

@RAytoun Attachments don't work with Github. To include an image, open Github in your browser and click the 'selecting them' button below.

[RAytoun]

@gravitystorm. What I was pointing out is that, not just someone else's cartography, but cartography in general has a certain style of symbols for depicting boundaries that, if it is adhered to , will be recognised as a boundary. The problem you have is using a continuous dotted line (albeit in a different colour) right next to other dotted lines of exactly the same size and spacing and wondering why it is confusing. You have users who's eyesight may not be as exacting as yours and the subtle difference from blue to purple may not be as clear. If you want to keep it as purple dots then make the dots a bit bolder and space them further apart so the visual appearance is different to the dots alongside them. I apologise for my lack of knowledge on using Github. I have scanned them from examples and are in jpg format on my desktop. The following is the result of using the select them button. They show how a specific set of symbols used throughout a map or map series establishes those symbols as boundaries. If it can be standardised usage throughout the OSM then there should not be a problem. I do apologise if I sound like I am talking guidelines..yes I am..cartography is made up of standards and guidelines that make it universally recognisable. I like the purple highlight which is a standard recognised way of depicting boundaries and if you vary the dot size and spacing you will still have a viable symbol that will be different to the dotted blue line.

[Rovastar]

I do not believe there is any worldwide standard for this.
Lets take the worlds most (by far) popular/recognised cartography map out there (sadly).....Google maps. There international boundaries are solid black lines.
Maybe in old media there is some countries cartos that follow this but never is it worldwide.

Now that is not saying that I disagree with the premise that we could/should do something about the issue here. I think infact that we should have more standardisation here.
Dotted for walkways/tracks, etc and dashed (Maybe thick dashed) for admin boundaries?
paths can be simple enough (more like footpath in someway maybe) but the 5 types of tracks I dunno....

[daganzdaanda]

The old school atlases of (West) Germany use a style very similar to what @RAytoun shows, with a thin solid line along the border and a bit of hatching to one side of it. The width of the hatching shows the importance of the border. The colour used is purple.

I like what @math1985 has come up with. Maybe the line in the middle could be solid, maybe that would be calmer?

[matthijsmelissen]

Maybe the line in the middle could be solid, maybe that would be calmer?

I think it would hide to many important features.

[MattBlissett]

I'm going to disagree with mboeringa here, at least from the perspective of a map user rather than editor:

However, since this particular color is consistently used for all admin borders, including the easily recognizable ones like country or municipal borders that people are familiar with, and the fact that all admin borders have a distinct type of labelling with the names of the "regions" drawn on both side of the lines, I think it is recognizable.

Practical use of a map for footpaths is likely to be on a fairly high zoom, often automatically when a map app/page is opened, so it's likely the user won't see, or will quickly skip by, the zoom levels where recognizable admin borders are shown.

In addition, these borders tend to take, or may take, "unusual" paths, like going straight through a building or crossing major roads like motorways or primaries without connecting, clearly signifying them as something peculiar like borders.

But again, at sufficient zoom, or in particular places like islands, rivers or coastlines, these clues are absent. Unfortunately, along coastlines or up rivers is exactly the type of place where we expect a path!

I like the grey style that's been proposed, it lets the emphasis of the map be the real-world features rather than "imaginary lines".

We should also consider the path styles. Borders, railways and roads (more-or-less) have the same or similar colour regardless of level/importance/type. Paths are blue, red, green and brown! (All four colours within 200m) One colour and then a variation of line pattern –– e.g. foot: – – – – –, cycle: – – • – – • – – • – –, horse: – – ♦ – – ♦ – – ♦ – –; ... the other thing... –– would bring these together, and reduce confusion with other colours.

I'll try and implement something...

[kocio-pl]

Sounds interesting...

[Tomasz-W]

@MattBlissett Please remember about ways included in boundary relations as 'outer', eg. here:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/550854902
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/52.40370/16.97979

There is no big problem with streets, but foot/bicycle ways look terrible with it. Can you test rendering of admin borders next to ways instead of rendering them on ways?

[MattBlissett]

One (or two) things at a time, and I'm still fiddling to improve this.

These images and the links use hi-res tiles, since I only have a HiDPI screen. Only Denmark is loaded on my server.

http://bitbucket.dk.blissett.me.uk/OSM/compare.html#16/55.83355/12.05447

http://bitbucket.dk.blissett.me.uk/OSM/compare.html#15/55.72266/12.49234

http://bitbucket.dk.blissett.me.uk/OSM/compare.html#15/56.01544/11.97868

I tried some more complicated patterns, but decided OSM-carto is already showing so much detail that cycle and footpaths should have similar, plain line styles.

• Cyclepaths: — — — in green
• Footpaths: · · · · · in green
• Bridleways: — c — c — c in green
• Tracks: unchanged

I think the paths are nicer on the grey background, but my green doesn't show up enough on some forest/grass landcover; I need more of the white behind it.

If it's horrible let me know now :-)

[matthijsmelissen]

Side remark: I don't think I ever saw hires tiles of this stylesheet, looks so much better!

[matthijsmelissen]

Good improvements! I think we need something like this in the main stylesheet too.

I've been playing with something similar for the bridleways:

[kocio-pl]

There is a whole map with osm-carto in HiRes:

https://osm.rrze.fau.de/testhd.html

In general it looks better, however there are also some drawbacks - raster patterns are less visible, so for example garden is hard to recognize.

[SomeoneElseOSM]

(since this has woken up again)

For someone not familiar with the style, it is really hard to distinguish paths and admin borders.

Yes - just as a bit of anecdata, we (the DWG) have had at least one complaint about OSM "showing footpaths across their land" which turned out to be level 10 admin boundaries.

[Tomasz-W]

I don't like the idea of any green highways. We have a lot of green shades on the map at the moment, and adding next one maching the rest will be problematic. I think current orange and blue are quite ok, and the problem to focus on is changing borders colour to grey. Of course is always good to see a test renderings with fresh ideas, but I would rather go more to colours between orange and brown or some grey shades.

[meased]

We have a lot of green shades on the map at the moment

This idea doesn't add more green, bridleways were already green, this just combines bikeways and footways into that color (thereby freeing up the orange and blue space).

I think the above renderings look great, and make the map easier to understand (especially for new users who don't know that blue=bike path, orange=foot path, and green=horse path).

[kocio-pl]

It effectively adds more green instead of red and blue and makes harder to understand that they are different IMO. Now they will have to know that this pattern means footway, this is bike path and this is horse path, because color will be the same. I think they are needed to show different path types easier so it's of no use to free them for something else.

[pnorman]

There have been updates to the area initially mentioned, the current rendering is