On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 12:36 PM, James Ewenve6...@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 12:08 PM, Richard Weaitrich...@weait.com wrote:
I think the provincial / state borders will continue to be yucky on
the main map until mapnik supports rendering different style sheets
per region / country.
My thoughts exactly, but does the OSM project support
continent/country wide style sheets? I suspect not, so the next step
would be to figure out who to query about this, and whether it would
be concept that would be supported. Would this be something that would
be up to the end user?
Well we are all the OSM project, so regional styles would have some
support; you and me at least. ;-) How to implement it? That's a
question.
If understand the concept, the main slippy map is just a place to show
what is in the database, and it would be up to the end user to render
tiles and create a display mechanism for their own use.
So, IF mapnik / osmarender supported regions style sheets,
and IF regional style sheets existed for USA and Canada,
and IF the Foundation / server team decided to support the idea,
then the main site could serve regional tiles to all who visit.
I think that the first two points are the tricky ones.
We, in North America, get to see what is
essentially a European style sheet, and as those countries are
smaller, rendering their states / provinces at zoom 3 is just as
stupid as not rendering ours at zoom 3.
Yes, I agree that there's no way that we can come up with a style
sheet that will work everywhere.
Well it won't be ideal to the eyes of everyone. The current mapnik
style, for example is about a bajillion times prettier than the old
vectors and 8 colours from early on in the project. SteveC (if I
remember correctly) put up a slide at SotM showing the old rendering.
The difference and progress is nothing short of stunning.
Thank you, Steve Chilton and other cartographers!
I think that's why the mantra Don't
tag for the renderers has come to be. People are trying to tag things
so they render on the slippy map in a manner in which they would like
to see.
I think that some of that is being done already anyway, since the
major highways in Alberta at least have been bumped up from Primary to
Trunk, and now to Motorway. With them tagged as Trunk or Motorway they
show up until zoom level 5, with Primary roads disappearing at zoom
level 7. You need to be at zoom level 5 before you can see the whole
province, but the provincial admin boundary doesn't show up until zoom
level 11.
Right. Er, correct, and it looks wrong.
Anybody can fix this. I played with mapnik a bit, just to see the
provinces. Please be gentle to my delicate server and connection.
http://weait.com/maps/?zoom=2lat=44.70531lon=-83.54813layers=0B0
So with a server and connectivity, and a slightly-revised version of
the default style, anybody can serve a better OSM for Canada than the
current default. Same goes for USA and state borders. No
Mapnik/osmarender changes required.
Would the main OSM site connect to and defer to the regional server?
I don't know. How would traffic compare on the regional sites? I
don't know.
I'll keep working on the style as I learn more about mapnik. I'll
probably have a mapnik article on my site in the next little while
too.
Best regards,
Richard
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