On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 12:36 PM, James Ewen<ve6...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 12:08 PM, Richard Weait<rich...@weait.com> wrote: > >> I think the provincial / state borders will continue to be yucky on >> the main map until mapnik supports rendering different style sheets >> per region / country. > > My thoughts exactly, but does the OSM project support > continent/country wide style sheets? I suspect not, so the next step > would be to figure out who to query about this, and whether it would > be concept that would be supported. Would this be something that would > be up to the end user?
Well we are all the OSM project, so regional styles would have some support; you and me at least. ;-) How to implement it? That's a question. > If understand the concept, the main slippy map is just a place to show > what is in the database, and it would be up to the end user to render > tiles and create a display mechanism for their own use. So, IF mapnik / osmarender supported regions style sheets, and IF regional style sheets existed for USA and Canada, and IF the Foundation / server team decided to support the idea, then the main site could serve regional tiles to all who visit. I think that the first two points are the tricky ones. >> We, in North America, get to see what is >> essentially a European style sheet, and as those countries are >> smaller, rendering their states / provinces at zoom 3 is just as >> stupid as not rendering ours at zoom 3. > > Yes, I agree that there's no way that we can come up with a style > sheet that will work everywhere. Well it won't be ideal to the eyes of everyone. The current mapnik style, for example is about a bajillion times prettier than the old vectors and 8 colours from early on in the project. SteveC (if I remember correctly) put up a slide at SotM showing the old rendering. The difference and progress is nothing short of stunning. Thank you, Steve Chilton and other cartographers! > I think that's why the mantra "Don't > tag for the renderers" has come to be. People are trying to tag things > so they render on the slippy map in a manner in which they would like > to see. > I think that some of that is being done already anyway, since the > major highways in Alberta at least have been bumped up from Primary to > Trunk, and now to Motorway. With them tagged as Trunk or Motorway they > show up until zoom level 5, with Primary roads disappearing at zoom > level 7. You need to be at zoom level 5 before you can see the whole > province, but the provincial admin boundary doesn't show up until zoom > level 11. Right. Er, correct, and it looks wrong. Anybody can fix this. I played with mapnik a bit, just to see the provinces. Please be gentle to my delicate "server" and connection. http://weait.com/maps/?zoom=2&lat=44.70531&lon=-83.54813&layers=0B0 So with a server and connectivity, and a slightly-revised version of the default style, anybody can serve a better OSM for Canada than the current default. Same goes for USA and state borders. No Mapnik/osmarender changes required. Would the main OSM site connect to and defer to the regional server? I don't know. How would traffic compare on the regional sites? I don't know. I'll keep working on the style as I learn more about mapnik. I'll probably have a mapnik article on my site in the next little while too. Best regards, Richard _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us