On Friday 30 October 2015, Yuri Astrakhan wrote: > > Kartotherian <https://github.com/kartotherian/kartotherian>, the > Mapnik+Mapbox-based vector service has been implemented and > trial-launched <https://maps.wikimedia.org/> at Wikipedia. The > service itself is fairly stable, but the styles can use some > improvements - both the sql->vtile > <https://github.com/kartotherian/osm-bright.tm2source> and > vtile->image <https://github.com/kartotherian/osm-bright.tm2>. > Hopefully this work can be used as the basis for the osm.org style. > Once the vtiles are ready, we can easily move to client side WebGL > rendering.
From my perspective this, i.e. imposing a certain technological framework on designers based on technological considerations, is the wrong approach. I wrote about this on my blog recently from a slightly different angle[1]. For a high quality style, design development has to mandate the technological framework, not the other way round. If you look at design problems recently discussed in the osm-carto style development[2] you will see most of them have nothing to do with vector tiles, they would not be made any easier to address with such an approach. On the other hand there are a multitude of things the current style handles fairly gracefully, especially the problem of reducing geometric complexity, that would be much harder to deal with in a vector tiles system[3]. In general it seems to me vector tiles are today often carried as some kind of religious mantra promising to be the solution of all problems while in reality they certainly are not. It is better to look for and identify actual design problems and see what technological means are available to solve them. So far use of vector tiles seem to primarily have lead to the following effects: - improved tile serving efficiency - a larger bandwidth of style variations - tighter contraints in basic styling decisions beyond what is already imposed by the OSM data model In short: from a design perspective vector tiles so far brought more variety in map styles but they ultimately all look very similar beyond superficial aspects. Nearly all of the more unusual maps that currently exist are not vector tile based. [1] http://blog.imagico.de/map-design-economics/ [2] https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto [3] For another example of where wikimedia maps fails miserably here see: https://maps.wikimedia.org/#18/47.99579/7.85194 http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/47.99579/7.85194 -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ _______________________________________________ dev mailing list dev@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/dev
