Hi We are almost 3 weeks, working actively on Mapnik and we have got our own XML Style file with PostGRE DB. We are on Windows (so we use windows binaries) and trying to make maps for a city in 9 Zoom Levels.
After all our experience with Mapnik, we found 2-3 main issues which even after a long reading on Google and forums (like Mapnik/ TileCache ) there are still unresolved for us. Talking to mapnik developer (thanks to Artem) we are hopeful that some of the issues will be resolved after release of 0.6.0. Two main issues around TextSymbolizer are here: 1- We are on Farsi Language (90% similar to Arabic Script - So it is Right-to-Left Script and characters are connected to each other. in English each character is standalone. But in Arabic and Farsi, each character depending on its location in the word, will be connected to previous or next character.) . Our road names are saved as UTF-8 in PostGRE. One problem is that Mapnik doesn't generate right-to-left texts properly. I have seen Artem post regarding Morrocco map on OpenStreetMap which is using Mapnik. It has been mentioned that using ICU will resolve the BIDI problem . But how can we bind ICU to mapnik or how can we setup mapnik to use ICU capabilities. Does it need to change codes and compile the windows binary again ? or it is just a config file to tell mapnik use this and that instead of this and that? How could this problem be solved? in our attached Screenshot, you can see that the name of Highway is not correct. characters are not connected to each other and they are ordered from left to right instead of right to left ! 2- The second issue is the baseline for texts on roads. As you see in our attached photo, the text baseline is not exactly located on the center of the road... I remember that in some products like ArcMap and Mapublisher, the user can give an offset to Text base line. Baseline for Farsi/Arabic is different from English and could be also different for some other languages. So there must be a way to let users to shift the text UP and Down manually in TextSymbolizer feature. I am not sure if this capability is there or we need to resolve it in some other way..But I see that even Morrocco map does not have this problem in OpenStreetMap.. How come? are they using enhanced version of Mapnik or there is trick around these stuff? Thanks Alireza Kashian Lilihood Beta: http://lilihood.com/people/in/singapore<%20http://lilihood.com/people/in/singapore>
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