Town names in OSM

[Wowbagger]

Yesterday I was cycling to Ipswich and I told the garmin to find me a route. It did so beautifully, but it turned out that the dot on the map which represents Ipswich was actually placed about 2 or more miles north of the town centre. Given that I was juggling time and had a train to catch, this was a bit annoying, although in the event I had about 10 minutes to spare.

I've had a look at OSM in edit mode using Potlatch but I cannot see anything in the precise area of the map which I can identify as giving the Garmin the idea that that was where the centre of Ipswich was.

Anyone got any ideas? It was that Andy Gates rendition that I was using, but I don't think that would have made any difference.

Going to Openstreetmap.org on a PC and asking it to find Ipswich takes you pretty much to the Town Centre.

Edit: there are two dots on OSM representing Ipswich. One is defined as "Ipswich, Suffolk" and the other is "Ipswich, GBR".

[fuaran]

Andy Gates' Garmin maps include contour maps, which were originally created by someone else, and hosted by the SMC. As well as the contour lines, these maps also include some peaks and a few place names. These place names are often rather inaccurate, as well as duplicating those in OSM. So thats why you get some of the town names in strange places. And it can't be fixed in OSM as such.

You could just switch off the contour layer, or use other OSM based maps without contours.

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[Kim]

Ah, I'd wondered about that myself.  I use the tiles version of Andygates' maps, installed in Mapsource, so I can combine it with Garmin's maps and choose between them on the eTrex as needed.  This doesn't include the SMC contours, which I also have installed in Mapsource separately (and can use in combination with the city navigator maps as well as the OSM one).  When generating a mapset, I specifically de-select the 'Names' and 'Voids' tiles from the SMC maps to avoid this issue.

[woollypigs]

Yup check the topo map. I have Camden Town right next to me.

Free maps for Garmin
Free maps for Garmin

[andygates]

I will be moving to fresh contours soonish, as part of the "fixing the ugly coastline" schtick.