things i don't understand

[Cudzoziemiec]

Well that's understandable. The pizzeria is paying to be listed in Google maps, the town isn't.

[T42]

Great for all those folk living in Domino Pizzaville.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Yes. But that's the consequence of commercial free-at-point-of-use mapping. IGN?

[T42]

The IGN has geoportail.fr, but although it can show a hell of a lot of data it's a bit lame - it tends to hang if you ask it to do too much too fast (e.g. to zoom in on somewhere then change from photographic to cartographic display.  I used to use it quite a bit when I was planning routes, but Google integrates searching and maps better, and doesn't hang.

[Phil W]

Why, in such maps as are found in GPS devices, on Google Maps, on OpenStreetMap and practically every other mapping service, the name of every wretched field is given at every resolution below 1:25000 but you have to fiddle with the zoom before the names of towns will appear.

Typesetting algorithms are hard.

Map labels are an order of magnitude harder.

A few years ago 'Copenhagen' disappeared from several layers of Google Maps zoom...

My favourite is zooming in on little villages in the midlands and discovering a field labelled "Great Britain".

It's where all the Brexiteers are going to live surrounded by a fence with keep the fuck out painted on it.

[Phil W]

As a former project manager I feel that I must point out that I can only work within the budget set by the client and the client nearly always complains that the estimate is too high and wants things cut. The documentation doesn’t affect the running of the software, so the client doesn’t see why they should pay for it.

Then the software doesn't do what they were expecting, and there's no documentation for them to read, to make sense of it.  They therefore can't sort it out themselves. So they need to ring your service team. Then they find out a service contract with you is 20% of the original development cost.  Then they find out that is payable every year they want support.  Then the client goes fuck it, and shoots themselves in the foot anyway, to match the situation they are now in.

[T42]

As a former project manager I feel that I must point out that I can only work within the budget set by the client and the client nearly always complains that the estimate is too high and wants things cut. The documentation doesn’t affect the running of the software, so the client doesn’t see why they should pay for it.

Then the software doesn't do what they were expecting, and there's no documentation for them to read, to make sense of it.  They therefore can't sort it out themselves. So they need to ring your service team. Then they find out a service contract with you is 20% of the original development cost.  Then they find out that is payable every year they want support.  Then the client goes fuck it, and shoots themselves in the foot anyway, to match the situation they are now in.

We haven't got the time to read the error messages so we just hit ENTER until they go away.

or

- We got an error message and although we keep hitting return it won't go away.
- What does it say?
- I don't know, nobody reads those things.

[cycleman]

The main problem of Google maps for me is the lack of definition between public and private lanes. Is there a lane though there or is it a farm track?.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Good point. They could do with some better shading or colour coding system, or something like that. Maybe just not marking farm tracks unless they're actually also public rights of way (but I suppose that would involve Google paying for access to definitive maps or something like that.)

[fuaran]

Why, in such maps as are found in GPS devices, on Google Maps, on OpenStreetMap and practically every other mapping service, the name of every wretched field is given at every resolution below 1:25000 but you have to fiddle with the zoom before the names of towns will appear.

I think that's specifically a French thing. Most of the government Cadastre data has been imported into OSM. That includes all of the fields, land use, building outlines, but doesn't have town names. And seems France is lacking in OSM contributors, may not have much other data from people who actually live there.
Also most OSM styles are fairly generic, designed to look nice worldwide, so they may not be so useful in particular countries.

[T42]

Could well be.  I've even noticed a difference in detail between Alsace and the rest of France, so I suspect that some residual Germanic obsession with exactitude prevails.