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Why does CoMaps seem to not understand addresses? (lemmy.zip)
submitted 5 days ago by to c/CoMaps@sopuli.xyz
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There is a frustrating issue with the CoMaps work flow. If I copy an address from Google maps into the CoMaps search bar, the application cannot find it.

For example, if I copy the address listed for the Portland Art Museum into CoMaps search:

1219 SW Park Ave, Portland, OR 97205

The search result varies. Sometimes it is:

Southwest 18th Avenue, 1219

Sometimes it is for the entire road:

Southwest Park Avenue

Is there a syntax issue here? You would think this would be a very easy find.

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[–] 31 points 5 days ago* (6 children)

Interpreting addresses is a hard problem. For example what Google does is absolutely amazing.

Unfortunately CoMaps doesn't seem to be able to reach anything even similar. I don't know if it's about lack of resources, or lack of expertise ... well it all comes back to money anyway.

https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/

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  • [–] 17 points 5 days ago (3 children)

    Then give me the option for a form with "number, Street, City, State/province" as an option.

    Comaps is great when you know your lat/lon. The search is terrible to the point of broken though.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    Problem is not everywhere in the world they use that style of addresses. Japan famously doesn't use street names for the most part, for example.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    No shit - but you don't use one form for all locales. You can localize it. The parsing it does now is broken to the point that I lookup places in Google Maps and copy coordinates to Comaps because even when it has the address it only works like 80% of the time.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 days ago

    Addresses were the bane of my existence a few years back. I tried to migrate from google to another provider, and figured I would just take the lat-lngs, do math to determine apprx distance, and validate that way. Turns out sometimes the new provider was off by the mailbox while google used the building, and sometimes google just guesstimated while the new provider was spot on.

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