New Developer Locations map available
Hello web guys. I hope there are still some people here who remember me. :) Having never been keen on the Debian Developer Locations map(*), I decided it was time to create something better. Please take a look at http://people.debian.org/~treacy/developer-locations.html I'd like to hear what others think of it. The cool thing about this is that it uses google maps so it allows you to zoom in on areas you are interested in. Notice how clustering reduces the number of markers in areas of high concentration of developers (necessary or the map is too slow). As you zoom in the density decreases and fewer markers are visible on the screen so more are displayed. Of course, being able to zoom in makes mistakes in the data more obvious. In particular, there are a number of people who claim to live in the water. To be fair, some of those near the coast may have entered a correct location but rounding has placed them on the wrong side of the coastline. To help developers get their coordinates in the correct format and check to see the effect of rounding on their location I also created http://people.debian.org/~treacy/coordinate-lookup.html . I think this should be linked from the web site in http://www.debian.org/devel/developers.loc (and some of the other options for generating coordinates removed). As an aside, I think that [+-]ddd.d should be the only format mentioned for the format of coordinates. Looking through the developer coordinates, I noticed too many people make mistakes in generating or entering other formats (what does an angle of 5924 mean?). If there is interest in using this on the web site, I'd like to wait a few weeks before switching. I will be contacting developers with questionable coordinates and would like to give them a chance to fix them. A few questionable locations on the current map does not look too bad but I have found over 40 problems when using the new map. (*)I feel free to criticize the map as I originally wrote the scripts to generate it. -- James Treacy [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New Developer Locations map available
On Sat, Aug 04, 2007 at 01:42:23PM +0800, Anthony Wong wrote: > On 04/08/07, James Treacy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I like it very much, it is so cool. Personally I have been trying to > do the same thing but had been stuck at the clustering problem. I've > tried yours, initially markers are clustered well, but after a few > zoom in and out and panning, the clustering fails to work, and then > lots of red markers are shown instead, causing my browser to grind to > a halt. I was considering creating my own clustering algorithm until I stumbled upon http://www.acme.com/javascript/#Clusterer >From my tests, the only time the clustering doesn't work properly is when the view crosses the international date line. If you zoom out all the way (multiple views of the earth are present) you will notice that Google maps only displays markers in the center area. > I'd also like developer names to be shown for the markers too, but > people will start to think about the privacy issues... and currently > db.debian.org doesn't report developers' coordinates to the general > public, doing so may require some kind of changes... This was discussed when the developer db was originally created. As with all things debian, there were a few people with strong (extreme?) views about privacy and in the end a very conservative approach was taken. Thus we have anonymous markers rounded to .01 degrees, which works out to about 1km accuracy at the equator. -- James Treacy [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New Developer Locations map available
On Sat, Aug 04, 2007 at 10:17:24AM +0200, Andreas Barth wrote: > In the default view, I think we have too few markers - at least in the > area I could judge it, that is Europe (it really looks like we only have > a few people there, whereas with the old map, you can get a good > impression where the debian-dense is higher). Without clustering the map is too slow to be usable. The clustering algorithm creates a grid and uses the large marker whenever there are more than a (configurable) number of markers in a square. I'll try refining the grid a bit and upping the number per grid to see what happens. For usablility, the goal is to keep less than about 150 markers on the screen at a time. One idea I had was to overlay the number of people represented by a marker to the center of the marker. > The other issue I have is that the data is too detailed in lots of cases > - one can easily spot which place exactly certain DDs live (I don't > have a personal issue with this though, because I just gave the > coordinates of the town I live in which isn't secret anyways). Is this really a concern? All the public knows is that an anonymous DD lives within 1km of that spot (actually about .7km east-west at 45 deg N or S). -- James Treacy [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New Developer Locations map available
On Sat, Aug 04, 2007 at 10:17:24AM +0200, Andreas Barth wrote: > In the default view, I think we have too few markers - at least in the > area I could judge it, that is Europe (it really looks like we only have > a few people there, whereas with the old map, you can get a good > impression where the debian-dense is higher). I have upped the number of partitions in the grid. It looks much better (especially North America and Europe). Let me know if you think it is too slow. -- James Treacy [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New Developer Locations map available
On Sun, Aug 05, 2007 at 10:09:55PM +0200, Alexander Schmehl wrote: > * Holger Levsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [070804 17:18]: > > > Without clustering the map is too slow to be usable. > > Speaking of unusable, I'd appreciate if a png version of the map is created > > too, as I usually have javascript disabled. > > ... and you can't embed google maps into your slides for a presentation > about Debian. I'll look into generating a large map using google maps. If it can't generate something better than the previous one, we can continue generating the old one too. -- James Treacy [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Acceptable coordinate formats
In devel/developers.loc there are three formats for coordinates that are listed. I suggest we get rid of the second and third as they just lead to mistakes. I have gone through the map looking for coordinates that look out of place (*) and a high percentage of them are due to mistakes in using the dddmmss and dddmm format. While those formats would not be listed on the page, they would still be accepted by the db. (*) Over 60 discovered already. Most are over water. Some are in places like Somalia. It's annoying when people don't reply and/or fix them. There is one in Antartica, for example, who lives in the US (got lat and lon mixed up). While it would be cool to have a DD in Antartica, it is misleading. -- James Treacy [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
New *Improved* Developer Locations map
Hello all, I was not alone in not being completely happy with the second version of the developer map so I bit the bullet and wrote my own program to aggregate high concentrations of developers. The results can be found in http://people.debian.org/~treacy/developer-locations.html . For comparison, the previous version of clustering is still available at http://people.debian.org/~treacy/developer-locations-v2.html . Of course, my original version is still on the web pages at http://www.debian.org/devel/developers.loc This version should address all the criticisms of version 2. Even though more markers are displayed at a time it is actually faster than the previous version. Let me know if you think it is too slow, in which case I'll drop the number of markers some more. If you see a (small) marker that looks out of place, send me the number of the marker (hold mouse over the marker) and I can send the developer a mail to fix their coords. Unfortunately only a small percentage of those contacted so far have responded. Enjoy. -- James Treacy [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New *Improved* Developer Locations map
On Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 09:40:37PM +0200, Holger Levsen wrote: > Hi, > > On Wednesday 15 August 2007 04:49, James Treacy wrote: > > in http://people.debian.org/~treacy/developer-locations.html . For > > This version should address all the criticisms of version 2. Even > > I still cannot see anything. > > (no javascript, no java, no flash, no cookies.) Just as google maps is not useful without javascript, this map does nothing without it (it uses the google maps api). You don't need the others capabilities you listed. As mentioned before, some people would still want the previous version available (*) so you could always use that. (*) http://www.debian.org/devel/developers.loc -- James Treacy [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
