On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 9:32 PM, Nathan Mixter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I know there has been a lot of talk recently about layers and what should be > displayed on the maps. I think the public buildings such as libraries, town > halls are good to have on the main map. > > Here is an idea I wanted to throw out to the OSM community. I am not a > developer, so I'm not sure what is being done or has been done along these > lines or even if it is feasible. > > Is it possible to somehow turn off and on certain features on the map? I'm > imaging something that works similar to mapstudio or another map making > program. If someone wanted to see just the buildings, just the roads etc, it > would be great if they could check a box and those features would show up or > not show up. This would eliminate the worry of the main map becoming too > cluttered and it would also help if people wanted to export the map to > highlight particular features. Once the feature is approved, it could then > be immediately rendered on the map rather than whenever someone decides to > render it. >
The problem is that you either serve the information to the browser, which then slows down hugely, or else you have to render bitmaps for every different layer, and either way you probably require way more server resources. The reason we do it the way it's currently done is that the process scales very well for many people looking at the map (we just keeping sending out the same prerendered image tiles). When everybody is trying to look at a different map, we need about a 1000 times as many servers, which doesn't work so well. Dave _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
