Hi Henk, On 22 September 2015 at 12:43, henk van der laan <h...@mijneigen.net> wrote: > Over the past couple of month some big changes in the rendering of the > map have been made. > These changes do not improve the readabillity of the map, and despite > it's good intentions do not seem to take into account the basics of map > rendering, but rather look at tagging and decide on that.
To aid the discussion, here you can compare the old and new rendering (Netherlands/Belgium/Luxembourg only): http://bl.ocks.org/tyrasd/raw/67a00dbb869456094373/#9.00/52.3535/5.0572 What mobile device are you using? We received this complaint more often, but I don't seem to have the same problems on my own device. > - the map lost it's contrast and colour-opposition. The total map is > dimmed, and looks flat. This is not an improvement: with the current > generation of mobile screens it is nearly impossible to read the map in > bright conditions, let alone in direct sunlight. Could you be a bit more specific about which objects and zoomlevels you are referring to? > - several highway-types have gotten a smaller line-width, up to a point > where the lines are impossible to see even on a high resolution screen. > In particular footway/path/cycleway are lost. This was done (only on low zoomlevels) to prevent clutter of footways in dense areas, which also caused serious readability problems. See for example Vondelpark on zoom level 13. We realise it makes it harder to read footways in less dense areas on zoom levels 13 and 14 (and only on these), but that's a trade-off we had to make. > - The combining of footway/path ( apart from beeing wrong to start with ) > led to little red dots. These do not stand out , especially against some > landuse colours. And again: especially on mobile device in bright > light they are invisible. Are there any specific landuse areas where the problem is most severe? > - dimmed colours seem to make the difference between highways less > visible: secundary, tertiary and unclassified do not stand out as > different as they used to. I agree. We are rolling out a chance soon that will make the highways much brighter. > Apart from this the underlying thoughts for the changes are a point of > concern: reading through the different threads I detect an alarming > trend to favor roads for motorized traffic over pedestrians/cyclist etc. This is certainly not a deliberate choice by the team that maintains the style. Interesting enough, I don't think any of the people who have been working on the changes you mention even own a car... > I even read one comment that suggests to get rid of bridleways in > rendering because there are no bridleways in his aerea ... > Others doubt the use of different colours for cycleways, because they > do not form a special roadtype .. only a legal distinction. > Following the last thought there would not be any reason to have a > distinction between primary/secundary/trunk etc. either. Everyone is free to comment whatever they like, of course... I don't think any of these arguments were considered as serious reasons to change the style by the style maintainers. > Imo OSM is a general map, that is: no particular feature should be left > out or favored over another. I'm not really interested in powerlines, > but do not oppose rendering them on the map. The problem is that we're at a point where we have so many features, that we need to make choices. For ex Also, we simply have so many different features now, that we have no longer enough colours to render them all... > So the conclusions: > - Currently the new rendering favors motorized traffic over others. > If the goal of OSM is to become a road-map like Google that would mean > the loss of thousands of mappers who use OSM as the only complete map. No, that's not the goal of OSM or the default rendering. > - Colourscheme does not adhere to even the basic cartographic rules. Could you expand on that? > - Readabillity is rapidly becoming worse. In the past I directed many > to OSM, praising it's very complete and readable map over Google/Bing. > That is no longer true. You're always free to help us improving the style sheet at https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto > - The new rendering omits the hard work of many contributers who > walked/cycled miles to give OSM more than just highways. The stylesheet maintainers are amongst this group, so that's not really fair criticism. > I vote to re-enstate the old rendering, honouring the work of many and > getting a readable map that is supports all users and contributers. We're always happy to consider improvements to the map, but simply reverting changes is not the way to go in this case, as that would also reintroduce the problems solved by these changes in the first place. > I wonder how many users would back me up on this. OSM is not a democracy. :) In particular, concrete proposals on how to do something are more likely to be considered than votes... -- Matthijs _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
