OS maps to go free online

[djc]

This can only be good news for UK orienteering:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 ... aps-online

[madmike]

It will be good news if it turns out to be true; however, it's totally at odds with the way OS operate as the Union guy says towards the end of the article!

Hmm - let me think! You promise something in Apr when there's an election in May......... Will probably fall victim to purdah and disappear.

I hope I'm being overly cynical and would love to be proved wrong.

[Scott]

The prime minister said that by April he hoped a consultation would be completed

Quite.

[Wayward-O]

A more complete government statement without the press interpretation is available here:

http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/corporate/1385429

I'm sure, though, that OS will find some loophole and keep making us pay for our own information - we do, as a nation, own OS.

[Wayward-O]

As an aside, the ELGIN map data appears now to be available to a scale of 1:5000 for the whole country and to 1:100 for a large part of it, including parts of the country not covered by their Roadworks database. No contours, but should make mapping urban areas much quicker / easier.

http://www.elgin.gov.uk/index.cfm?fusea ... treetworks

[Scott]

Pretty sure those 1:100 maps are the 1:1250 OS MasterMap data enlarged. As you say, it's handy for urban mapping.

[geomorph]

we do, as a nation, own OS.

sort of like several large banks then.... maybe GB will announce free loans sometime before the next election 'cos free OS whilst great for us ain't going to appeal to that wider electorate.

Yes the Elgin news is good. Combine this with contours from the above and you've a very solid foundation for rapid map compilation

[Scott]

we do, as a nation, own OS

But because OS charges for it data it doesn't receive any funding from the public purse. If all OS data were made freely available, the taxpayer would have to stump up £100million a year to cover the lost revenue. Which might not be popular with the majority of (non-Guardian reading) taxpayers, who may feel that there's quite enough freely availably geographic data to satisfy their needs.

[geomorph]

we do, as a nation, own OS

But because OS charges for it data it doesn't receive any funding from the public purse. If all OS data were made freely available, the taxpayer would have to stump up £100million a year to cover the lost revenue. Which might not be popular with the majority of (non-Guardian reading) taxpayers, who may feel that there's quite enough freely availably geographic data to satisfy their needs.

Maybe the odd 100m will get lost in the 70bn we've got to stump up to clear our debt burden

[madmike]

Do you really believe it's only £70 Bn?

[awk]

Can anybody explain (in fairly simple terms!) how I can get that data into OCAD or as a template, if that is possible? Obviously printing off is one, but I was wondering about actually importing data.

[Scott]

Ask this chap?

[martin]

Unfortunately the Elgin website has recently changed to using bitmapped (PNG) files rather than vector graphics (SVG) files. When I try a URL to download the svg files I now get the message "SVGMS has not been licensed!". I presume the svgs are still there, but you need to have a valid Username & Password for elgin before it will allow you to download them. Therefore I am currently unable to download svg files for auto conversion to OCAD. So as far as I can see, the best that can be done at present is to copy the png bitmap from elgin (eg in Firefox, go to tools,page info,media...), (you can edit the url to give a bigger area (setdisplayheight,setdisplaywidth) or stitch together the pngs in mspaint or similar), and use the bitmap as a OCAD template for tracing.

[Nails]

png is a raster -flat image containing no vector data. So yes all you can use it for is a background image.

[martin]

To simplify getting a large template map from elgin edit the url below.

http://80.168.56.101/mapguide2009/mapag ... scale=2500

This url will give a 2000 by 2000 pixel, or 1km by 1km area around Bramhall park.
Change setviewcenterx and setviewcentery to get your required centre location (these are the location values in metres at the bottom of a streetmap.co.uk map)
Increase setdisplayheight or setdisplaywidth to give a bigger area.
Change setdisplaydpi or setviewscale to alter the scale

When you have opened the url, use left mouse click to zoom/unzoom and right mouse click to copy or save as a template. Use mspaint or similar to convert the png file to a gif or bmp or jpg format that Ocad likes.