This is a static archive of our old OpenStreetMap Help Site. Please post any new questions and answers at community.osm.org.

Can the maps for a region be shown differently when accessed from different countries?

1

Due to political reasons, geographic maps of different countries show up differently in different countries. For example the map of India that shows up would not be accepted in India , esp govt organizations. Google has a technique of showing this. So the Google map identifies the source country and accordingly displays a map. Does OSM have similar capability?

asked 27 Aug '18, 09:22

steven%20zhao's gravatar image

steven zhao
26●1●1●2
accept rate: 0%

One Answer:

2

This requires two parts:

  • first, OSM would have to have a way to record what needs to be shown - e.g. "government of India requires this boundary to be shown, government of China requires this other boundary to be shown". There is currently no established way in OSM to tag this.
  • second, the OSM tile server would have to detect where you come from (this is already done to some degree) and then generate a map that matches your local requirements. This is currently not possible because there is only one set of world-wide tiles that is generated for everyone.

For the time being, people who want a different-looking map for political reasons (or any other reasons) have to create their own, replacing the OSM data source with something else where needed, like for example the map on www.openstreetmap.in.

answered 27 Aug '18, 10:47

Frederik%20Ramm's gravatar image

Frederik Ramm ♦
82.5k●92●720●1273
accept rate: 23%

edited 27 Aug '18, 10:59

SomeoneElse's gravatar image

SomeoneElse ♦
36.9k●71●370●866

Source code available on GitHub .