CoMaps

765 readers

49 users here now

Cooperative community open-source fork of Organic Maps, an offline privacy-respecting not-for-profit OpenStreetMap GPS app for your phone.

CoMaps website

founded 5 months ago

MODERATORS

zyphlar@sopuli.xyz

oleg_rswll@sopuli.xyz

Does CoMaps use Wikidata "also known as" data? (aussie.zone)

submitted 2 months ago by Zagorath@aussie.zone to c/CoMaps@sopuli.xyz

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

When I first became aware of Organic Maps, the very first thing I noticed was that you cannot search for "Maccas" and get a sensible result back. At the time I gave up on it, thinking that although theoretically not complicated, it would be practically too difficult.

But it turns out this is already a solved problem. OSM data for chain businesses has a brand:wikidata field with values like Q38076, which points to that organisation's page in the Wikidata database. And Wikidata has a field called "also known as", which includes a pretty comprehensive list of different names for the chain. If an OSM-based mapping app checked the Wikidata, it could easily resolve a search for "Maccas" as intending to search for McDonald's restaurants, and other similar such cases. OM obviously doesn't do this. Does CoMaps? Is there a way to suggest that it should to the developers?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] drspod@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

How large is the database? Because it would need to be downloadable for offline use. If you were querying a remote database for your search terms, that would be a privacy violation, and CoMaps needs to work offline.

[–] eatham@aussie.zone 6 points 2 months ago

CM already uses wikidata for some things iirc. It doesn't store the whole database, only what it needs.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 4 points 2 months ago

I don't know, but I can't imagine it's very large. Only things significant enough to be chains or similar have entries, and it's one per chain not per node. Then each Wikidata entry might have a few to a few dozen akas at most. I'd be surprised if it's more than a few dozen megabytes to download the entire globe's data. Less if you only get your region.