 Anybody looked into doing this? I want to superimpose my tracks on the relevant OS map on my website in order to add perspective of the walk etc. I've contatced Memory Map and asked them, they in turn have suggested that I contact OS. The site is my personal site with no sponsorship etc and therefore does not generate any income. What are peoples thoughts on this and have they gone down this road before? By the way I've looked at OS Explore and it does not quite cover what I really want to do.
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 I "think" that you have to purchase a licence from OS. (not 100% sure though)
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Well I've e-mailed OS Customer Service and the reply could take up to 15 working days! So I have to wait and see what they say. I've checked out their website and only can see an example where a license is required if your website generates income, as mine does not I believe it does not fall in that category. Further reading took me to Framework Direct Licence and Standard Licence but I still can't see displaying a map with a route superimposed as it will not be used for promotion. All a bit confusing to me.
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 I'm not 100% sure what the current position is. You used to have to have a liscence from the OS which cost about £47.00 per annum. This gave you the right to put your routes on your website. To stick truly to the terms this meant scanning the relevant part of your map and then superimposing your route but most people used Memory Map or Anquet. There are moves afoot I believe to alter this but I'm not quite up to speed on what they are. I believe that this is soon to become available if you can make sense of it OS OpenSpace Sorry I can't be of more help. Dave from Dave & Edith Browns walking diary
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 Check Geoff's website at http://v-g.me.uk/ as this is exactly what he's been working on.
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 My understanding of the openspace license is that you can use them on your site as long as it is non commercial and that it has no adverts of any description. I am using them on my blog thing . Email me if you need help getting started, as the example code OS provide does not work and needs a little manipulation, I also had to make a little programme to build the route map!
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Dave Brown 2 thanks for the info on Open Space, it might just be the answer if I can get my routes/tracks superimposed on them easily. Zubald, thanks, very interesting read, I can't say that I am surprised with the different responses from OS, it will be interesting what response I get. Reiver thanks for the information and also the link. I had a look at the source code of your maps (wow!), if this is the way ahead I might just take you up on info on getting started, it looks very similar to OS Explore in some respect so I suspect it is similar code. How do you add your tracks/routes, because I have my tracks/routes available in Memory Map and therefore do not want to go through the process of redoing them. I have not received a reply from OS as yet, I suspect it's a little to early!
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Don't be put off by the javascript, once you get it in the right place in the right order (unlike the source code given out ny OS, which dosnt work) all you will have to do is change the co-ordinates for a new map. I made a Thing up to build by routes, it is a bit heath robinson but it does work in a fashion, click on "Start" then click your route into the map (no lines appear which is crap) then click on show and the co-ordinates appear below ready to copy and paste. I don't know what Memory Map is or what data sets they give out, but if you get stuck, send me an example and I will try and make a converter in Excel.
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 I now have the OpenSpace thing working, just have to add a bell and whistle or two. If you want to see an OpenSpace application working at 1:50,000 with a route (plus clickable user-defined symbols) superimposed, I've just uploaded my latest trip Yr Wyddfa & Hebog, click the 'OS Route Map' icon at the top. I wrote a program to convert the GPX output from Memory Map into the OpenSpace javascript statements, it sure saves a lot of time and effort Reiver is right, the examples on the OpenSpace site have errors and I found one new bug myself. Anyway once sorted the result ain't half bad and gives the user some control. In case there is any ambiguity, there must be no financial gain, direct or indirect, from any page on your website, not just the page that the map is on (or referenced from).
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 Fantastic photos and well done on the map, sure helps us plan a trip to this area. What camera were you using?
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| Edited: 21/02/08 17:47 |
Cheers Geoff it looks like this is going to be my only way to get maps on my website. I've also read another thread on here where the OP has had a reply from OS stating that the options are either £47 odd per year or Openspace. Once I get signed up with Openspace can I ask for yours and Reivers advice on getting it working (if I get problems) and also your little widget for converting from MM into OpenSpace JS statements?
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RogerB: Thanks very much, I'm a beginner really, very slowly improving. I now have a Canon 350D with 17-40L lens, both of which are very good so any deficiencies are down to me, not that there was ever much doubt!. Dorian: I've covered the £47 per year license thing on the blog, briefly it is a paper map copying license only, and the terms are about to change to exclude displaying even scans of those on a website, although current annual licenses will be allowed to run under the old terms until completion. There is no general license in existence that allows images obtained from mapping software on a site, nor will the OS create one. This situation is one of the main reasons behind OpenSpace - it's a compromise whereby the actual map images remain hosted on their servers rather than our websites. You are welcome to email me with any questions about what I did or problems you are having. If you want to see the source code for my map page and see what the HTML and javascript look like, bring up my map and right-click it, then choose 'View Source' or equivalent in your browser. I can anticipate one likely question:- the OpenSpace interface expects map coordinates in absolute all-numeric OS grid format, as opposed to the usual 2-letter prefix type of OS grid ref. The program I wrote to convert my MM GPX into OpenSpace JS uses a Visual Basic interpreter and is intimately tied in with my system and map symbols, I can't easily package it up into a standalone program. If I had time I could rework it in C++ I suppose. It would only deal with the route line, which is the main thing, but the symbols and popup texts (if any) are different for everybody - I constructed my own.
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Done it!!!! Got an API from OS, started playing with their code, grabbed a beer rather than a coffee though! Looked at superimposing a route from MM, this is when the headache began, wow some equations and stages you need to go through! Anyway I developed a spreadsheet to batch convert lat and long csv files to the correct format to display on the map, at this point I learned about WGS84 and OSGB! The end result copied and pasted into Dreamweaver and it works a treat! My result can be seen at http://www.dorianthomas.co.uk/maptest.htm If any one wants a copy of my spreadsheet, give us a call.
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Looks great. Well done on thinking of using a spreadsheet. I keep forgetting about the value of Excel as a batch computation tool, it can be an easy way to avoid a lot of programming.
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Yes, excel is excellent for creating repetitive code, I used it to build a Corbett map with openspace See Here . Pity it dosn't really work, too slow to load! (I know that there is two corbetts missing, white law and another) Can you see any way of getting the zoom level, so that different size icons could be used at different zoom levels.
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| Edited: 25/02/08 09:33 |
Yes, excel is excellent for creating repetitive code, I used it to build a Corbett map with openspace See Here . Pity it dosn't really work, too slow to load! (I know that there is two corbetts missing, white law and another)
It loaded fast enough here, certainly as fast as Multimap or GoogleMaps, I suppose it depends on the general internet traffic and how busy their servers are. If your spreadsheet contains the names of the Corbetts, it should be easy to include the name in a popup balloon as the third parameter to CreateMarker - this pops up when the user clicks on it. That's what I did for my summit icons on my route maps. I intend to post a question on the OpenSpace forum asking if they could include a property or function to make the balloon pop up on hover rather than click, which would be a lot better for our cases. Can you see any way of getting the zoom level, so that different size icons could be used at different zoom levels.
I haven't studied the interfaces much yet, but it probably can be done using their API functions. It would be a bit messy I would think.
I imagine it would involve intercepting a mouse or keyboard event, getting the current zoom level and if it has changed, issuing a 'remove all markers' command and redrawing them all with a different icon.
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 Dorian that looks fantastic, exactly what I've been after for my own site for a long time, must go figure it all out now!
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Geoff, I am finding my munro/corbett map is taking far too long to load, about 50 seconds. I don't like the current balloon feature that OS is offering, I don't like the way it recenters the page when you click it, it is slow and clumsy. Like you I would prefer a mouseover event to display text in the way the "title" attribute works in html. I will also contact OS. As to different size icons, it really needs an event to be fired by a change in zoom level, again, the way it appears to be set up this would need to be offered by OS corbett blog
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Jamie, if you want any advice, code or even an Excel spread sheet just shout. I'm not claiming to be an expert but I can share what I've learned!
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 Hmmmm - I wonder if it'd be worth the hassle of changing over from Google Maps to this. I'll need to have a look into it.
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