Author Topic: Methodology for entering  (Read 70054 times)

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Offline Eth

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Re: Methodology for entering
« Reply #15 on: May 03, 2018, 08:13:43 pm »
I seem to be in the minority here in that I prefer a geographical breakdown first. The states are kept in alphabetical order, so Alabama is at the top of my file, then California, Connecticut, and so on down to West Virginia, with routes outside the USA (currently just Iceland) at the very bottom.

Within each state, Interstates come first, then US Highways, then state routes, then unnumbered TM-tracked routes, always in numerical (or alphabetical) order within the category. Auxiliary routes come after all the mainline routes of that category (so, for instance, my file has MD US1AltWas right after MD US522). If I have multiple segments of a route within a state, I try to keep those in west-to-east or south-to-north order, though I may have a few of those out of place.

It works for me; if I need to edit a line, I know exactly where to find it.

Offline vdeane

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Re: Methodology for entering
« Reply #16 on: May 05, 2018, 05:35:01 pm »
I also use a geographic breakdown, with the US first, then Canada, each organized by state/provence.  Within each, I have interstates/autoroutes/400 series highways (including business), US/TCH routes (including auxiliary and historic), any selected/named routes, then state/provincial routes.  At the bottom I have commented out lines for mileage in devel systems (currently just NY Parkways), and speculative system (currently just a piece of AL 149).
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position of NYSDOT or its affiliates.

Offline yakra

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Re: Methodology for entering
« Reply #17 on: May 06, 2018, 02:12:04 am »
My ordering is roughly similar to Bickendan's. It's based largely on when route systems were added to CHM (which started with Interstates, then expanded into US routes and other systems) and TM.
Same here.
CHM had interstates first, so I've listed those first. 3dIs follow their parent 2dIs.
Then, Business Interstates.
Then, US Highways, with bannered routes mixed in following their parents.
These groups are sorted alphabetically by state postal abbreviation.

Next come the state systems, sorted again by postal abbreviation for the corresponding state.
These are sorted by system, so ME NH113B is in with a bunch of NH routes, and NH ME153 is in with a bunch of ME routes.

USASF are sorted by state, lumped in with the state routes.

When the provincial routes in the Maritimes were activated, I added everything to the end of my .list as one big road trip, listing all the segments in the order and direction in which they were traveled. (I've only been there once, when I was 8 or 9, and my .list file here is a best guess.)

Since then, three "major" road trips since late 2013 have been added at the .list's end. Otherwise, one small clinch here or mileage extension there gets sorted with the other stuff from its tier & state up in the main body of the list.

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I often need to do a Wordpad search within my list file to find ... where to add new entries.
Ayuh. I search for ME ME, then hit Page Down however many times.

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One other thing I do is try to group together entries for a route within a state, in order of where they show up in the Highway Browser. That makes it easier for me to fold entries together when I fill the gaps between them.
Same here.
I've sorted State route segments by route number/name; disconnected segments of the same route go in 'HB order".
The one exception is Vermont State Highways. A relative latecomer activated only after CHM was superseded by TM, VT got sorted at the end of the state routes section (alphabetically after RI) & before the Canadian Maritimes. Vermont State Highways themselves are sorted into several individual mini-roadtrips in Vermont over the years.
For the list lines themselves, I enter them in the direction traveled: State Route Begin End.
So if I travel ME I-995 1 4 and then ME I-995 6 3 and these would overlap to form a single .list line, I'd probably just list them in the order in the HB, ME I-995 1 6.
There may be some overlapping or redundant lines with the sections where I've listed individual trips, but I'm not too fussed about tidying them up muy pronto.

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Also, I try to remove or avoid adding list file entries that are entirely concurrent with other routes (in early CHM days, we needed such duplicate entries, but now automatic multiplex detection makes them unnecessary). For example, many Texas Interstates are concurrent with U.S. routes, so I just list the U.S. routes without duplicate entries for the Interstates.
I avoid adding these now, and will trim out unnecessary ones when I come across them, but doing so is not a priority. (When NY343 was relocated recently, I just deleted its entry from my .list, as all I had was the NY22 concurrency.)
Thus I have no Future Interstates .listed, as NY17 is sufficient.
No TCH in NB or NS, just listing NB2, NB16, NS104 & NS106 instead. I do have some PE TCHPEI listed. This tells me I added this stuff to my .list before the PEI provincial routes were activated. Holy wow. No other PE roads are listed; I'll have to figure out where I went again, and see if there's anything more I can add...
« Last Edit: May 06, 2018, 02:16:25 am by yakra »
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Offline mapcat

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Re: Methodology for entering
« Reply #18 on: May 06, 2018, 08:26:18 am »
When I first constructed my list back in 2011, I did all the interstate mileage first, since that was all I really cared about at the time. Then over the next few months, I added the other routes on a state-by-state basis as I reconstructed my travels. Canada got added in there somewhere, but I waited until I retrieved an old travel journal from my parents' house before adding routes in the UK & Ireland.


The list has about 7500 lines now. Keeping it organized and updated is easy in Excel (I'm surprised no one has mentioned Excel yet). It's alphabetical by region (first column) and route (second column, so AK10 and AK11 come before AK2) with special (non-mapped) sets at the end, with their region preceded by YY for routes I clinched that can be re-clinched since a segment moved, and ZZ for routes that I clinched before they were removed from TM/CHM. After a trip, it's easy to scan the list for routes to add mileage to, and all new routes get added to the end in random order. Then I sort it to get the new ones in place and copy-paste into a .txt file, format it for TM, and copy-paste the whole thing it into my .list on Github. It usually only takes a few minutes.
Clinched:

Offline rebelgtp

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Re: Methodology for entering
« Reply #19 on: June 29, 2018, 02:34:35 pm »
Is there an existing character or a means to add a character string that the updates will ignore?

For example, I had been using "// {Insert my sorting method text here}" for separating things like Interstates in a particular state, US Highways in a particular state, or state highways in a particular state...

Offline michih

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Re: Methodology for entering
« Reply #20 on: June 29, 2018, 02:41:19 pm »
Comments are ignored (no error log output). Comments are lines starting with # character. It is only possible to comment out the whole line.

Offline rebelgtp

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Re: Methodology for entering
« Reply #21 on: June 29, 2018, 02:52:19 pm »
Comments are ignored (no error log output). Comments are lines starting with # character. It is only possible to comment out the whole line.

Hello! That was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!

Offline Duke87

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Re: Methodology for entering
« Reply #22 on: August 21, 2018, 08:44:31 pm »
I seem to be in the minority here in that I prefer a geographical breakdown first. The states are kept in alphabetical order, so Alabama is at the top of my file, then California, Connecticut, and so on down to West Virginia, with routes outside the USA (currently just Iceland) at the very bottom.

Within each state, Interstates come first, then US Highways, then state routes, then unnumbered TM-tracked routes, always in numerical (or alphabetical) order within the category. Auxiliary routes come after all the mainline routes of that category (so, for instance, my file has MD US1AltWas right after MD US522). If I have multiple segments of a route within a state, I try to keep those in west-to-east or south-to-north order, though I may have a few of those out of place.

I do basically the same thing, with a couple differences. One is that I put bannered routes in line with their parents (so for Maryland US1AltWas would go between US1 and US11), at least for US and state highways. Interstate business loops get grouped separately after regular interstates and before future interstates.

Another is that I do Canadian provinces in order from west to east rather than alphabetically, simply because this is how Rand McNally always did it so in my head that is the "correct" order to list Canadian provinces in.

Interestingly, we both share Iceland as the one country outside of North America we have been to, and it is last in my list file as well.

Offline vdeane

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Re: Methodology for entering
« Reply #23 on: August 25, 2018, 03:32:54 pm »
Similar, though I include interstate business routes and future interstates in with the regular ones.  By coincidence, Canada does both for me (only been to Ontario and Québec), so I guess I'll have to figure out how I want to do it if/when I get to other provinces.  Haven't been to any countries beyond yet.
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position of NYSDOT or its affiliates.

Offline jwood.ok

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Re: Methodology for entering
« Reply #24 on: July 15, 2020, 10:55:59 pm »
I know this is an old topic, but its my topic dangit, and I had an update and a question.

Since my beginning on the site, I've done my list by geographic region, in my case by state and then a few countries at the bottom of the list.  This served me well for my historic data.  I'm also glad that there is now support for comments which I don't think existing initially.

In any case, the last few weeks, I've wondered about switching to date-based entries going forward.  It would make it easier to piece together trips that way, especially if they are multi-region.  The question I came up with is this: Is there any issue with having multiple entries for the same stretch, or is that just ignored?  Obviously on every trip I'm driving on road I've already been on, but usually trying to pick up something new, but it would be a lot easier to just go ahead and put the whole trip in vs just the new pieces.

Offline ntallyn

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Re: Methodology for entering
« Reply #25 on: July 15, 2020, 11:21:13 pm »
In my experience, overlaps (repeats) don't cause any problems with the site. Might take just a hair longer to process, but that's probably pretty minimal.

Offline Jim

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Re: Methodology for entering
« Reply #26 on: July 16, 2020, 12:00:37 am »
Totally up to you.  If the same segment is marked as traveled by multiple entries in your .list, it will still just be marked once.  It does mean a fraction more processing time during a site update, but the resulting entries in the database for your travels would be identical.

Offline jwood.ok

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Re: Methodology for entering
« Reply #27 on: July 16, 2020, 10:30:43 pm »
Alright, thanks for the replies.  The other reason I was thinking of switching to date-based entries is I think my kids may eventually want their own list.  If I keep my own list based on dates, I'll have a better knowledge most times of if they were with me, and when it comes time for them to make their own list, we can just grab those dates to be a good starter for their own list.

Offline yakra

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Re: Methodology for entering
« Reply #28 on: July 19, 2020, 03:00:27 pm »
And of course, comments can help, as you already noted. EG,
# Trip with John
# Trip with Jane
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Offline M3200

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Re: Methodology for entering
« Reply #29 on: August 05, 2020, 04:20:48 pm »
I looked at several of the posted list files and I like the ones that are separated by region and 'type of highway', so I am using that format.  Just started submitting updates this week - it works great.  Jim's process is easy to follow.

The only disappointment I've had is that some mileage doesn't count: there are portions of state highways in California that, while they still have posted route shields, are no longer part of the "official roadway" and are excluded from the mileage computations.  Such is life.