Hi All, Matt has mentioned it in the other thread regarding the stylesheets, but I thought I'd expand a bit on what I'm up to.
For a long time (coming up for a year now) I've been contemplating creating a carto version of the main stylesheets. I ported all my own stylesheets from xml to carto and found a renewed joy in developing them, both through the change in syntax and from the improved toolchain (i.e. using TileMill). Also, I much prefer using git than SVN, since it makes it much easier to try things out on a branch and seek feedback, rather than passing patch files around or just stomping over the main branch - or even having patches slip by because people (like me) are uneasy just committing them and never get round to it. Finally, I've seen so many thinly-customised versions of the OSM stylesheets that I know people are trying and struggling to work with them, and I have painful experience of working with multiple different XML stylesheets (OpenCycleMap and MapQuest, to name but two). I had no idea how few commits there had been to the stylesheets over the last six months (pretty much none, really), so there's a good opportunity for a conversion given the reasonably static target. Yesterday I decided that rather than emailing the list, I would dive in and see how much work it would be to convert them to carto, and whether it's feasible https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto By a rough metric of number of mapnik rules, I'm 48% of the way through the conversion. Currently the map looks like this: http://thunderflames.org/temp/openstreetmap-carto-wip.png So far so good! I strongly believe that this is the way forward. Ideally I'd like to finish the conversion and hit a 1.0.0 release of the new stylesheets - one that we can swap yevaud over to without causing much kerfuffle. Then I've already identified a bunch of improvements to the stylesheet that will make life easier, and which I hope will attract new cartographers (the many who are familiar with Tilemill) and/or rekindle interest from our battle-hardened veterans. At the very least, we'll soon have a carto version of the current stylesheet. Regardless of what we decide wrt to old XML stylesheets - if, say, someone else decides to take them on and develop them in the traditional manner - I'm sure the carto version will be of interest to many people. Please, ask away if you have any questions. I'll keep the list posted with how I get on. Cheers, Andy _______________________________________________ dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/dev
