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title: Documentation
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<div class="desc">
    <img src="/img/docs-128x128.png" width="64" height="64" alt=""/>
    <h1>Documentation</h1>
    <p>Learn about Osmium</p>
</div>

<p>Each project on this site has its own documentation. See each project
page for details. Here are some good starting points:</p>


<h2>FAQ</h2>

<p>Some of your questions might be answered in the <a
href="faq.html">FAQ</a>.</p>


<h2>Osmium Concepts Manual</h2>

<p>The <a href="/osmium-concepts/">Osmium Concepts Manual</a> explains some
high level concepts of Osmium and all the things that are the same whether you
use the libosmium C++ library, its NodeJS or Python bindings, or an application
based on any of these. Read this first before you dive into the details of how
to use the libraries.</p>


<h2>File Formats Manual</h2>

<p>OpenStreetMap uses several different types of files containing different
types of data and it uses different formats to "encode" this data into bits and
bytes on your disk.</p>

<p>The <a href="/file-formats-manual/">File Formats Manual</a> gives an
overview over the different file formats and encodings and explains what they
have in common and what their differences are. It has been written for the
users of the Libosmium library or any of the tools built on top of this
library, but it is useful beyond that.</p>


<h2>OPL File Format Manual</h2>

<p>The <a href="/opl-file-format/">OPL File Format manual</a> contains a
description of the OPL file format, a text-based format for OSM data, created
for use with scripting languages and typical Unix text utilities such as
<tt>grep</tt>, <tt>sed</tt>, and <tt>awk</tt>.</p>


<h2>Libosmium C++ Library Manual</h2>

<p>The <a href="/libosmium/manual.html">Libosmium Manual</a> describes the C++
library.</p>

<h2>Osmium C++ Library Reference</h2>

<p>The C++ reference documentation for the Osmium Library is automatically
generated using Doxygen. It is, of course, important for C++ developers, but
developers using Node Osmium or PyOsmium might want to refer to it, too. It is
available for several versions:</p>

<ul id="source-code-reference">
    <li><a target="_blank" href="https://docs.osmcode.org/libosmium/latest/">latest</a> (latest released version)</li>
    <li><a target="_blank" href="https://docs.osmcode.org/libosmium/master/">master</a> (development version)</li>
</ul>


<h2>Osmium Tool Manual Pages</h2>

<p>The Osmium Tool comes with a set of manual pages available from the
<a href="/osmium-tool/">project page</a>.</p>


<h2>OSM Wiki</h2>

<p>Some more information about Osmium can be found in the <a
href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmium">OSM Wiki</a>.</p>


<h2>Talks</h2>

<p>Over the years Jochen Topf has given several talks about different versions
and different aspects of Osmium. Note that some information in these talks
is out of date.</p>

<ul>
    <li>June 2014 at SOTM-EU 2014, Karlsruhe:</br>
        <b>Osmium to the Rescue</b>
        [ <a href="https://media.jochentopf.com/media/2014-06-15-talk-sotmeu2014-osmium-en-slides.pdf">slides</a> |
          <a href="https://media.jochentopf.com/media/2014-06-15-talk-sotmeu2014-osmium-en-video.mp4">download video</a> |
          <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NBDGIIm-l8">watch on youtube</a> ]
    </li>
    <li>September 2013 at <a href="https://2013.stateofthemap.org/">SOTM 2013</a>, Birmingham:</br>
        <b>High Performance OSM Data Manipulation With Osmium</b>
        [ <a href="https://media.jochentopf.com/media/2013-09-08-talk-sotm2013-osmium-en-slides.pdf">slides</a> |
          <a href="https://media.jochentopf.com/media/2013-09-08-talk-sotm2013-osmium-en-video.mp4">download video</a> ]
    </li>
    <li>March 2012 at <a href="https://fossgis-konferenz.de/2012/">FOSSGIS 2012</a>, Dessau:</br>
        <b>Das Osmium-Framework</b> (in German)
        [ <a href="https://media.jochentopf.com/media/2012-03-21-talk-fossgis2012-osmium-de-slides.pdf">slides</a> |
          <a href="https://media.jochentopf.com/media/2012-03-21-talk-fossgis2012-osmium-de-video.mp4">download video</a> ]
    </li>
</ul>