OpenStreetMap Calendar
OpenStreetMap Calendar also known as OSMCal is a webpage (osmcal.org) as well as a software that manages an openly editable online calendar.
| OpenStreetMap Calendar | |
|---|---|
| Author: | Thomas Skowron |
| License: | Apache license 2.0 (free of charge) |
| Platforms: | Web |
| Status: | Active |
| Version: | - (2021-11-07) |
| Languages: | German, English, and French |
| Website: | https://osmcal.org |
| Source code: | https://github.com/thomersch/openstreetmap-calendar |
| Programming language: | Python |
|
Web calendar editable with an OSM account | |
Motivation
Since 2004, this wiki hosted the OpenStreetMap calendar containing all kinds of events from mapping parties to hackathons and State of the map conferences. While this situation was initially handy because everyone could add an event by editing a wiki page, it became more and more difficult to edit the wiki pages properly. This was due to the incease in events, more advanced formatting, and the integration of the calendar in other projects such as WeeklyOSM. The projects first used the bare wiki markup to display the calendar on their pages. A design change around 2015 changed the wiki markup code drasticly and put an end to this strategy. The H-event microformat was introduced for this use case. The format could be transformed into JSON and used in other calendars.
The integration of microformats and the automatic translation of calendar entries made the calendar templates once agian more complex. As a result, the MediaWiki software became unable to render all events of one year as in 2017. Additionally, the calendar required a "maintainer" even for simple tasks such as archiving past events and fixing markup errors. This was done by Verdy_p and later Tigerfell. Two major changes in the template design followed in 2018 and 2019. Both aimed at reducing the rendering time of long lists of calendar entries and increasing usability for users not familiar with wiki markup.
Calendar project
The development of a system that could organise the calendar with less maintenance and better usability started in May 2019.[1] The project started as a simple calendar editable for everyone with an OpenStreetMap account. Additional features were added. In 2020, both the wiki's calendar system and OSMcal were used in parallel. After finishing and enabling a wiki plug-in that displays the contents of the OpenStreetMap calendar, the wiki's original calendar system was terminated on 2020-12-31. A complete archive of the events from 2004 to 2020 continues to be available in the wiki.
Weblinks
- OpenStreetMap Calendar Documentation
- containing links to the API documentations
- OSMCALWikiWidget
- MediaWiki plug-in used to display calendar entries