Hi Richard, IMHO, going down the path of creating a separate rendering platform just for Australian maps is a bad idea:
a) most Australian users will never hear of it, and continue to use websites and mobile apps derived from the standard Mapnik/Cloudmade/openstreetmap.org/... b) it would divert effort/attention away from fixing data for those platforms. The potential benefits, on the other hand, of supposedly "tagging for the renderer" by using the tags place=city, place=town etc in a regionally-appropriate way (ie, tagging large towns as place=city) are high, the effort is low, and the potential harm is low. Let's be a little bit pragmatic here. This is one of the reasons why Google Maps does so well - it solves actual *problems* (bad rendering) with pragmatic solutions, and doesn't twist itself in knots trying to satisfy high-minded ideals. Steve On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 2:25 AM, Richard Weait <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 11:16 PM, Nick Hocking <[email protected]> > wrote: >> >> Richard wrote >> >> "Take a shot at creating rendering rules that fit your use case! :-)" >> >> I'm with John on this one - especially for the case of Australia. Maybe >> we need a special renderer for Australia. Just recently I managed to get >> some new mappers interested in mapping in rural NSW. >> >> They have started on the Wyndham area (which was just about completely >> unmapped, and they are having the same problem as John. I,E when they want >> to see Wyndham and it's neighbouurs (Candelo and Cathcart) at the same time >> on a map, OpenStreetMap shows almost nothing since they are too far apart. >> >> We really need a smart renderer that determines (for each tile in each >> zoom level) what are the most significant objects/ways in that tile/zoom and >> makes sure that they are rendered (even if they happen to be hundred mile >> long dirt tracks). Also if the major places in the tile are only >> localities,hamlets or villages then they should be rendered. That way we >> would not be tempted to elevate a village to a town just to make the map >> usable. > > > Largely, I think that removing the temptation to elevate a village to a town > is an education problem, not a rendering problem. "Don't tag for the > renderer" is part of it and "look at this awesome transit map" is another > part. Back to creating a specialty rendering that is smarter about sparse > areas. > > I don't think that the smart sparse renderer is impossible. In fact, a new > feature was discussed on the mapnik list this week, transformation plugins, > that may be helpful. Transformation plugins allow you to analyze and > transform the data before rendering, so that might just be the place to > decide which place= to render at which size / logo / prominence. So if it > interests you, have a go at it. > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-au mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au > _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
