As part of my work on the Mapio Cymru project I’ve provisioned a new experimental map server.
Like the main map it shows a map with place names in Welsh. The difference now is that it provides a symbol next to every place name to show which data source was used. This should help anybody who wants to contribute place names in Welsh, participate in the project, and ultimately improve mapping in the Welsh language.
As a freelance web developer I always enjoy working on Mapio Cymru, and it’s an opportunity to bring together some of my interests: free software, open data, maps, and the Welsh language.
The project has grown from the experimental map with names in Welsh. We are now helping a couple of organisations to offer mapping services in Welsh.
One of those organisations is Trafnidiaeth Cymru / Transport for Wales.
Here’s Ben Proctor from the project with some details of our consultancy work for TfW:
Transport for Wales asked us to undertake a piece of research for them. They wanted to know how they could build online mapping applications that treated Welsh and English language equally.
We’ve been thinking about these issues for several years and we maintain a Welsh language map of Wales at openstreetmap.cymru This, however, was a real opportunity to think about these questions from an organisation providing public transport services across Wales. We’ve produced a report for Transport for Wales which has a lot of detail in it and is very focused on their specific circumstances. […]
I very much enjoyed co-organising the Mapio Cymru workshop as part of AmGen, the online National Eisteddfod 2021 – to discuss OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, open data and mapping Welsh-language place names for free use in apps and other projects.
Here are some notes from the event and a fideo (in Welsh).
I’ve just blogged about my work on Mapio Cymru, on the project website:
We are building an open public map of Wales with all the names in Welsh. Because of recent work, the map will load much faster for you now.
Here’s what we did to improve the map loading speed.