Routes?

[oyvindsolstad]

(sorry for starting so many threads)

I'm looking at the way Wikipedia show routes on maps. As I work with travel, it's super interesting to look at ways to visualize data inside Obsidian.

Here's the map Wikipedia makes for I-80 (Interstate 80): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_80#/map/0

The map is zoomable too:

Is there any way to make the leaflet plugin do similar? I understand that a route needs lots of datapoints to be zoomable.

It would be useful for all kinds of stuff I do:
• map routes
• plan travels
• show past travels
• production planning

etc.

[valentine195]

This could possibly be done with GeoJSON Files. See this issue: #93

Edit: to be clear, I haven't implemented this.

[oyvindsolstad]

Looks like a way to do it. I guess as a developer it all boils down to "make features most will use" vs "cool advanced stuff four people will love". 😄

GeoJSON looks interesting, cool format. Reading up here.

[valentine195]

I added the geojson tag. Check it out in the Readme!

[oyvindsolstad]

Fantastic! One small question: How do I get the json/geojson-files into Obsidian? Do I have to link to external files?

[valentine195]

Sorry - it needs to be in your vault, then you can wiki link to it.

[oyvindsolstad]

That works flawlessly! Wow. I downloaded a neighbourhood map file for Toronto just to test. I'm so impressed by your coding skills and plugin. Thank you again. I'm going to use this so much.

[oyvindsolstad]

It worked! I looked at the wiki posts for the highways and found KML files. They were not to easy to download in a useful format so I just grabbed all the points, used an MacOS app called Clean Text, made a set of macros that changes the formats to be the way JSON wants it to be. Saved it in the "filer" (files in Norwegian) and added it to the highway map.

Voila.

All zoomable and lovely.

[oyvindsolstad]

Regarding why Wikipedia/Wikimedia make it so hard getting at their maps. I talked to a former admin, and he said it's a bit of a mess, the whole map thing. Lots of maps are PNGs or SVGs, some are new, quality accurate data, and some are very rudimentary maps with lots of data missing to make load times quicker.

Would probably be better if they just let Openstreetmap handle that part, but maybe that's not possible with their platform.

Anyway, with the solution at Mapbox, I can convert GPX to GeoJSON, and I'm good. So thanks for the link!

[zhubib1234]

I used “geo USA Route66 edit2.geojson”, but there was no display on the map, and the “simplestyle spec” example given was used, and it was not shown on the map. So I want to learn from the implemented examples.

[Moonbase59]

Ok, @zhubib1234, if you have the geo-usa-route66-edit2.geojson somewhere in your Obsidian vault, a map like this in your Obsidian note should show it:

# U.S. Route 66

```leaflet
id: route66
maxZoom: 18
zoomDelta: 0.5
zoomFeatures: true
geojson: 
  - [[geo-usa-route66-edit2.geojson]]
```

[Moonbase59]

So I need to learn how to do this manually on my own Mac.

Good plan! I don’t know if MacOS comes with Python3, if not, you could use Homebrew to easily install it.

It’s good to use Python for that, because it’s relatively easy to learn, and fast, even on large datasets. Plus, you can easily make a GoeJSON file "readable" (by using indent), and afterwards compress it again (using no indent). A text editor is almost always much too slow for work like that.

For the examples, I didn’t even bother to write a script—just fire up python3 (it might be called just python) and type in the commands. And bingo!—GeoJSON edited! Perfect playground. ;-)

[zhubib1234]

thanks！

[oyvindsolstad]

I've used Google Maps, and this service to convert links to GPX. Then I use the toGeoJSON tool to convert to JSON, and edit a bit to get my own colors, descriptions etc.

Only flaw with this, is that Google Maps sometimes routes you around traffic so the file you get by creating the route yourself, MAY be imprecise. But as long as I know this (I check as much as possible before making GPX-files), I'm good.

I'll see if I take away the markers at each end. It may be too much with all the interstates in place.

After all this is done, I'm going to try to use all my tracks from 11 trips in the US, and see if I can map them all on the same map. It's a mess as they are in Google maps, Swarm, old GPX-files, notebooks, EXIF data in images etc.

But fun to use to learn.