Overpass API developpement

[mmd <>]

Hi,

Am 11.05.2015 um 10:09 schrieb Arian Allenson M. Valdez:
> Hello everyone! I'm Arian, a Computer Science student. I'm one of the 
> students accepted in the Google Summer of Code program, and my project is 
> the creation of a Learning platform for Overpass API!

welcome to Overpass API dev list! Hope you enjoy your stay with us.


> The Overpass API is an incredibly powerful tool, but it’s use is still 
> limited due to the quite beginner-unfriendly documentation and scarce 
> tutorials, and this project aims to fix that.

Right. Martin already did a terrific job by introducing the Overpass
Turbo Wizard. For many users, this is a pretty good starting point and
covers a lot of use cases already.

However, to unleash the full potential, you really need to dig through
the Wiki documentation and often think in completely different ways due
to the way the language is constructed. Speaking from experience, this
can take quite a while. So, improving this situation is really needed.

One thing which comes to mind is explaining higher level concepts to
make assembling more complex queries more straight forward. As an
example: Initially I found it somewhat difficult how inputsets work,
especially the implicit ones ( "._" ). Making it clearer, how each
statement operates on an ingoing inputset and how it affects an outgoing
inputset would be an important cornerstone of such an exercise.

A general comment: it would be good to support future evolutions of the
Overpass language also in the learning platforms. There will be new
statements and additions to existing statements (if we can convince
Roland to merge a few pull requests :). Being able to keep the platform
in-sync with current developments would be a great plus.

Maybe you find the Overpass API by Example page useful: it's a
collection of many question from help osm, gis.stackexchange,
stackoverflow, osm forum and others and should cover also some more
complex use cases:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Overpass_API/Overpass_API_by_Example


Best,
mmd