On Friday 29 June 2018, Daniel Koc4� wrote: > > All in all this is a good example for OSM-Carto being at a > > crossroads (and having been for quite some time) between staying > > avant-garde and pushing the boundaries of cartographic design and > > technology or being satisfied with shuffling the options offered by > > the cartographic mainstream within the technological framework used > > - and which, due to Mapnik and CartoCSS being essentially > > unmaintained, becomes more narrow and limiting every year. > > I don't see a crossroad here: being avant-garde in cartographical > sense might sound cool, proud and tempting,
I did not make any assumptions on avant-garde being a positive thing here. In fact for a long time i have clearly said that i think that OSM map design should become more pluralistic. But historically OSM-Carto has been and has meant to be avant-garde, in particular also to justify being rendered on OSMF infrastructure. > This style codebase is large and that might sound like causing a > problem with maintenance, but adding more features is far less > challenging than something as sophisticated as for example "new" road > code - and nobody seems to be even noticing how complicated it > became. You are making the wrong assumption here that code complexity and cartographic sophistication always need to go together. But they don't. There are plenty of examples of cartographic sophistication being implemented without additional code complexity as well as code complexity being added which was cartographically a step back. You are also making the wrong implicit assumption that code complexity is the only major factor that negatively affects developers' ability to implement changes. A huge part of the code complexity in OSM-Carto has been for a log time in workarounds for limitations in Mapnik and CartoCSS. And you are wrong that "nobody seems to be even noticing" complexity of the roads code. At least Lucas, Paul and me have a very good idea about this. And the unpaved roads rendering is not the problem here, the problem is the complexity of roads rendering in general. Right now OSM-Carto is in the position of a quasi-monopoly in what it does. A potential competitor would need to mobilize a tile serving infrastructure at least roughly on the same level as that of the OSMF to seriously challenge it. And this is quite a big hurdle. This creates a pretty stable comfort zone where OSM-Carto can rest idly even if the world of digital cartography is progressing around it. Ultimately this is not the question on what is the right development model for an open map design project. This is about the almost complete lack of competitive pressure to make sure whatever development model is used it is challenged to deliver the best results (or be abandoned because it is unable to do so) - which is not happening for OSM-Carto right now. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/
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