Philippines addresses
  • I use Navigator Free in the Philippines.

    Over here places tend to be split into smaller areas using numbers.

    As an example, I live in a place called Molino. This is sub-divided into Molino 1, Molino 2, etc.

    This makes finding streets here difficult, as if I type in Molino, Navigator will only find streets in Molino, Not Molino 1, Molino 2, etc. So unless you know which specific part of Molino a street is in, it is necessary to go through all the different Molino areas until you find the correct one.

    Would it be possible to strip the numbers from the end of place names when creating the maps for the Philippines to make searching easier ? (bearing in mind sometimes people have used Roman Numerals at the end of some place names.)

    cheers, Ian
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  • Navigator FREE primarily uses administrative areas to search the streets. Unfortunately for Philippines is not well defined even country/region boundary (see http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/relation/443174).
    In case of missing administrative areas it is using the nearest 'place' and does not recognize between parts of city. Can you define boundary=administrative for the city Molino? That would solve this case.
  • Hi,

    finding information for boundaries over here is not as simple as you'd expect, hence the missing or incomplete boundaries.

    Creating a boundary for Molino may solve the problem for Molino, but many places here use this naming scheme. In an ideal world all these places would have proper boundaries, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

    The search engine does find Molino at the moment if it is entered as a town, the problem is you then get a list of matching towns ie. Molino, Molino 1, Molino 2.

    Now if I want to find a street I have to select Molino from the list, enter the street name and see if I get a result. If not I then have to select Molino 1, enter the street name and see if I get a result. If not I have to select Molino 2, enter the street name and see if I get a result. Do you see how tedious this can be?


    Cheers, Ian
  • Hi Ian,
    the philippines_osm from planet-110202 contains only three "Molino"s:
    | 943875196 | Molino 2 |
    | 943875201 | Molino 3 |
    | 943875186 | Molino 4 |
    "Molino 2", for example, is defined as Node id=943875196,
    "place"="village"
    "addr:city"="Bacoor"
    "place:ph"="barangay"
    "name"="Molino 2"
    ... so it is not clear that it is part of larger city?? Also no "Molino" this time.
  • Hi,

    strange you didn't find Molino.

    If I enter Molino in Navigator I get Molino, and Molino's 1-4.

    I think the problem may be the mappers putting is_in tags in the ways, and putting the different versions of Molino in there.

    That would make removing all the different numbers for place names more awkward.

    It is probably safe to say that if a place name ends in a number, then it is part of the place name without any numbers.

    I noticed you've updated the map for the Philippines, thanks for that. I shall download it, and see what results I get with the latest map.

    Cheers, Ian
  • I used newer version which is on update now (from planet110202) so that's the difference & reason I could not find Molino without number.
  • Hi,

    Last month I spent some long days fixing the broken administrative boundaries in the Philippines.

    I also completed and fixed all the provincial administrative boundaries.

    With the latest map download searching is finally working (hooray!).

    Though I still have one problem (there's always something else :-) )

    The problem is, it is only possible to search on administrative boundaries of level 6 (municipalities) and higher. Of course over here provincial boundaries are level 4.

    Would it be possible to change the search to allow level 4 boundaries to be used ?

    If so then it would be possible to search for any street with a name in the whole of the Philippines. Now that would be cool.

    I did try to find a source for municipal boundaries, but unfortunately I could not find any that were compatible with the OSM licence :-(

    Cheers, Ian

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