There is a frustrating issue with the CoMaps work flow. If I copy an address from Google maps into the CoMaps search bar, the application cannot find it.
For example, if I copy the address listed for the Portland Art Museum into CoMaps search:
1219 SW Park Ave, Portland, OR 97205
The search result varies. Sometimes it is:
Southwest 18th Avenue, 1219
Sometimes it is for the entire road:
Southwest Park Avenue
Is there a syntax issue here? You would think this would be a very easy find.
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When i put just “1219 SW Park Ave, Portland” it immediately finds the museum. Municipal code formats vary everywhere in the world and my best guess is that it gets confused by the extra numbers at the end. In general my experience with osm applications is that less verbosity is better for the search.
comaps uses openstreetmap data. you can help improve that data, including by filling in missing addresses. check this to start: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Addresses
This should be the top reply. CoMaps is actually very good at interpreting addresses, but if the data isn’t there it isn’t there.
Some editors are beginning to label address blocks so that users can at least locate the correct street block instead of just the street. It’s a lot of volunteer hours to do it.
If users want to improve it, CoMaps makes it extremely easy to add points or leave a note for editors. That’s about the best you can ask for.
The address info for my street is missing from OpenStreetMap too. I’ve considered fixing it multiple times, but every time I think about it my next thought is “there’s got to be some way to import it in bulk instead of doing it lot-by-lot” and then I get stuck because (a) the complexity of the process goes way up and (b) I have no idea where to look for that data.
Imports also generally require proposals, an additional hurdle. For my unmapped area, over the course of a couple of years, I surveyed and used a 360 camera to map these. Most of my area now has address data :D
Interpreting addresses is a hard problem. For example what Google does is absolutely amazing.
Unfortunately CoMaps doesn’t seem to be able to reach anything even similar. I don’t know if it’s about lack of resources, or lack of expertise … well it all comes back to money anyway.
https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/
Then give me the option for a form with “number, Street, City, State/province” as an option.
Comaps is great when you know your lat/lon. The search is terrible to the point of broken though.
Problem is not everywhere in the world they use that style of addresses. Japan famously doesn’t use street names for the most part, for example.
This is going to surprise you but I work in logistics software and can assert it’s true
There’s no correct way to parse an address, and no assumption that can generally be applied about it
You basically need some form of AI to parse an address with acceptable quality in an application designed for international audiences
If the search feature is for one province or area you might be able to get away with some hard coded format or heuristic but in the international space, even between countries that speak the same language, or within one country, there is no one technique for parsing an address
