Israel Hiking Map

This Repository is part of the Israel Hiking Map project, and it holds all the file and instructions needed to create the tiles and offline copies of the Israel Hiking Map - a topographic map with style similar to Israel Trails Committee (ITC).

The output of the map can be seen here.

Contents

• Ready-to-use maps
  • OruxMaps for Android
  • Galileo for iOS
  • Marble
• Tile Access
  • Tile URLs
  • QGIS Integration
  • Tile Mirroring
• Prepare a map for offline use
• Building the map

Ready-to-use maps

OruxMaps for Android:

• The map is available for Online use as part of OruxMaps built-in maps.
  • Select the map using "Maps → Switch map → ONLINE → Israel Hiking"
• For offline use:
  • From your Android device, with OruxMaps 6.5.4 or later
    • Go to the Israel Hiking and Biking offline maps for OruxMaps page.
    • Click on the link of the requested map.
    • The download may take several minutes.
    • After the installation please refresh the offline map list using "Maps → Switch map → OFFLINE → Refresh (the counter-clockwise arrows)"
    • Note: The free space required for the instalation is twice the size of the downloaded map.
  • From a PC connected to your Android device with a USB cable
    • Go to the Israel Hiking and Biking offline maps for OruxMaps page.
    • Click on the link to the requested map.
    • Connect the Android device to your PC.
    • On your Android device select "File transfers" instead of "USB for charging", if needed.
    • On your PC
      • Open the downloaded zip file and copy the directory it contains to a temporary locaton, such as your Desktop.
  • Move the above directory onto the Oruxmaps\mapfiles directory of the connected Android device.
  • Open OruxMaps and refresh the offline map list using "Maps → Switch map → OFFLINE → Refresh (the counter-clockwise arrows)"
  • You can now enjoy the map with no need for a network connection.
  • To update an offline map, repeat the same steps above. The new map will replace the old one.

Galileo for iOS

This is the only app for iOS that we know is supported, please consult this pdf file in order to use it.

Marble

Marble is available for various Linux Desktop distributions, Windows Desktop. The Mac OS X version may require compilation. Setup instructions:

• Maps folder location is
  • Windows: %programfiles%\Marble\data\maps\earth\
  • Linux : /usr/share/apps/marble/data/maps/earth/
• Copy the osm.org.il folder to maps folder
• Copy the mtb folder to maps folder
• Copy the routes folder to maps folder
• Select "osm.org.il" in the available maps

Tile Access

The tiles on the the Israel Hiking server are currently available for private, non-commercial use.

Please avoid overloading the server and use Tile Mirroring where possible to minimize the the load.

Tile URLs

The following tile sources are currently available for zoom levels 7 to 16:

• Israel Hiking Map: http://IsraelHiking.OSM.org.il/OldTiles/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
• Israel MTB Map: http://IsraelHiking.OSM.org.il/mtbTiles/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
• Hiking Trails Overlay: http://IsraelHiking.OSM.org.il/OverlayTiles/{z}/{x}/{y}.png

The URLs are following the Slippy map tilenames naming conventions.

QGIS Integration

The maps can be added to QGIS, by by the following steps:

1. Install the "QuickMapServices" plug-in into QGIS

2. Click on the QuickMapServices icon

   

3. Choose "Settings"

4. Open the "Add/Edit/Remove" tab

5. Under "My services", create a new service by clicking the "+" button

   

6. Fill the form in the "General" tab

   

   Note: The icon can be downloaded from here

7. Open the "TMS" tab and fill the form with one of the Tile URLs

   

   Fill the other values as shown above.

8. Click "OK"

9. Click "Save"

The new map is now available in the OSM group under the QuickMapServices button

Tile Mirroring

Sites and application owners are encouraged to create a mirror of latest tiles on their servers.

We have found that wget is a simple and effective tool to create such a mirror mechanism. For example:

cd public_html/IsraelHiking
wget --recursive --timestamping --accept=png --no-parent --no-host-directories --no-verbose --limit-rate=200k http://israelhiking.osm.org.il/Tiles/ http://israelhiking.osm.org.il/OverlayTiles/ http://israelhiking.osm.org.il/mtbTiles/ > temp/wget_tiles.log 2>&1 

wget comes pre-installed with most Unix/Linux distributions. A free MS-windows version of wget is available for download online.

A daily task for refreshing the mirror tiles can be created:

• MS-Windows: Windows' Task Scheduler
• Unix/Linux: the cron utility.

Prepare a map for offline use

MOBAC - MOBile Atlas Creator is used to create offline maps for for many navigation applications, including OruxMaps. It is a JAVA program that runs on Windows, Linux, MAC, and more.

iPhone and iOS users can find instructions for using MOBAC to create offline maps for Galileo and Looking4Cache.

1. Download MOBAC - MOBile Atlas Creator.
2. Download Israel Hiking Online.xml to the {MOBAC installtion folder}\mapsources folder.
3. Open MOBAC (it takes some time since it runs on Java) and choose "oruxmaps sqlite" or any other atlas format, as accepted by the map application.
4. On the left side under "Map Source" choose "Isreal Hiking Online".
5. Move zoom on the top of the screen to 7 and by mouse drag select the whole country (the selected area should be red)
   • Alternatively, you can select the required area using a polygon and avoid spending disk space for the Mediterranean Sea and foreign countries.
6. Under "Zoom levels" choose 7,8,...,15 ...You may also choose to add zoom level 16, but because of size limitation, the map area cannot contain all of Israel.
7. Click "Settings". Choose "Map size" tab and change the Maximum size of rectangular maps to 1048575 if needed.
8. Under "Atlas Content" set name to "Israel Hiking" and click on "Add Selection". ...this should result in adding the name to the tree, opening the tree should show the selected zoom levels (7 - 15).
9. Click "Create Atlas". An "Atlas" is the map prepared for offline use.
10. A window should pop up with progress, make sure to check "ignore download errors", the operation should take about 20 Minutes, depending on the polygon selection, zoom levels selected, your Internet speed and the power of your PC.
11. Once finished you should be able to find the atlas at the {MOBAC installation folder}\atlases\Israel Hiking\{Creation Date}\Israel Hiking folder.
12. Copy the inner Israel Hiking folder (not {MOBAC installation folder}\atlases\Israel Hiking!) into the oruxmaps/mapfiles folder on your Android device or follow the installation instructions of your map application.
13. Enjoy, open a OSM account and add trails to make this map better :-)

Building the map

Follow the process below if you want to create your own tiles or modify the map style. Maperitive is used to create the map tiles and it runs on Windows, Linux and MAC. Note that this might be tricky on PCs that has windows 32bit and less than 8GB RAM).

One-time setup for Maperitive and the Israel Hiking Map generation:

1. Download the latest Maperitive version from the Maperitive site
2. Extract the contents of the zip file to a desired location.
   • If you have Administrator permission for your Windows machine, you can unzip to the Program Files folder, but this is not a requirement.
   • If MOBAC will be used for creation of offline maps, the two installation directories need to have the same parent directory or the MOBAC directory needs to be added to the PATH environment variable.
   • On Linux and MacOS, Maperitive requires the use of Mono.
3. Download the Israel Hiking Map zip file from the IsraelHikingMap/Map on GitHub site (this site if you read this file in GitHub).
4. Choose a location on a disk with no less than 10GB of free space. Our favorite locations are in the Maperitive Install folder, or within the Documents folders hierarchy.
5. Unzip the zip file to chosen location.
6. Rename the top Map-master folder to IsraelHikingMap.
7. Download the wget zip file.
8. Create a wget directory in the same parent directory as the Maperitive installation directory. Alternatively, place the wget directory elsewhere and add it to the PATH environment variable.
9. Extract the contents of the zip file to the wget directory.

Map tiles generation:

1. Ensure you have Internet connection to enable downloading of the latest OpenStreetMap data.
2. Double-click on the IsraelHikingMap\Scripts\Maperipy\CreateOruxMap.py script file.
3. If asked how to open the file, please choose maperitive.exe from the Maperitive installation folder.

This should generate 256x256 png tile files inside the IsraelHikingMap\Site\Tiles folder and would take several hours. You may choose to do it overnight, but you need to make sure you don't get out of memory.

Preparing locally generated map for offline use

This is an optional stage in case you want to make the locally generated tiles available for offline use.

1. Follow the instructions to prepare a map for offline use, and exit MOBAC.
2. Download Israel Hiking.xml to the {MOBAC installtion folder}\mapsources folder.
3. Edit the IsraelHiking.xml file and change the \<sourceFolder\> tag to the full path of the directory were the tiles were created, such as ...\{IsraelHikingMap Install folder}\Site\Tiles.
4. Run MOBAC
5. On the left side under "Map Source" choose "Isreal Hiking Local".
6. Re-create the atlas using your locally generated map.

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Created by Harel Mazor and Zeev Stadler 31-Mar-13. Last Updated: 29-Nov-16