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<div class="moz-text-flowed" style="font-family: -moz-fixed;
font-size: 14px;" lang="x-unicode">On 12/12/2014 16:32, Mateusz
Konieczny wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite" style="color: #000000;">> No matter how
you put it the style still has a strong European
<br>
> and even British focus which is an issue with OSM being an
<br>
> international project IMO.
<br>
<br>
And also focus toward major cities. There is an obvious fix -
people
<br>
outside UK/Europe/major cities making PRs, submitting issues
about
<br>
problems that nobody reported before and commenting on issue
tracker
<br>
(it is much easier to change something as PR is active, useful
<br>
reports/comments are also helpful).
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<flippant mode>
<br>
There's one obvious reason why people don't suggest changes -
they'd just get rejected (1).
<br>
</flippant mode>
<br>
<br>
The fact that changes that don't go in the general "direction of
travel" (2) of the style get rejected isn't a problem in itself -
one map style can't (to misquote the famous stage direction)
"render everything louder than everything else". That's why
different maps for different purposes have different styles (both
inside and outside of OSM). It's clear that the people working on
the style have a "vision" of what the map should be like
(personally I'd suggest "one that looks nice at the expense of
some functionality (3)"), and that's a perfectly valid goal - but
it's not everybody's. It is, of course entirely understandable
that people who are contributing time and effort do so in a way
that "scratches a personal itch".
<br>
<br>
Personally I'd prefer it if the "direction of travel" of the style
was defined more clearly than in individual github comments, but
it makes sense that there is one - I don't believe that you can
have a "good design by committee" and even though I fundamentally
disagree with the logic behind #542 and #747 I agree that someone,
somewhere has to make a decision that "<span
class="moz-txt-underscore"><span class="moz-txt-tag">_</span>this<span
class="moz-txt-tag">_</span></span> is the kind of map we're
trying to be; <span class="moz-txt-underscore"><span
class="moz-txt-tag">_</span>this<span class="moz-txt-tag">_</span></span>
is the sort of information that we're trying to show and <span
class="moz-txt-underscore"><span class="moz-txt-tag">_</span>these<span
class="moz-txt-tag">_</span></span> are the places that it'll
be useful".
<br>
<br>
So maybe what we need to do is "not start from here". It's
already easier than ever to set up a small tile server (4) - out
of the box that one's using osm-bright but other styles are
available (5). TileMill's crash course is pretty good (6), and
it's even easier to not even bother with that at all and just
postprocess the data (7) and use some "good enough" style. It's
even fairly simple to plug your tiles into the OSM website (8) if
you want to do that. Someone somewhere may come up with map style
that works a really well with tea plantations in China - people to
whom that's useful should be able to use that. People who want to
contribute to and use openstreetmap-carto can do that too.
<br>
<br>
Rather than say "let everyone contribute to the standard map
style" why not say "let everyone create their own map style" - let
a thousand flowers bloom!
<br>
<br>
Cheers,
<br>
<br>
Andy Townsend
<br>
<br>
<br>
1) <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/641">https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/641</a>
, see also discussion at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/pull/542#issuecomment-44789930">https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/pull/542#issuecomment-44789930</a>
for the problem.
<br>
<br>
2) <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/pull/747">https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/pull/747</a>
and <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/765">https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/765</a>
<br>
<br>
3) <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/pull/747#issuecomment-50230004">https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/pull/747#issuecomment-50230004</a>
<br>
<br>
4) <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/manually-building-a-tile-server-14-04/">http://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/manually-building-a-tile-server-14-04/</a>
<br>
<br>
5) <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=project+extension%3Amml&type=Code&ref=searchresults">https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=project+extension%3Amml&type=Code&ref=searchresults</a>
(stolen from a post of Zverik's on the Russian forum)
<br>
<br>
6) <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/docs/crashcourse/introduction/">https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/docs/crashcourse/introduction/</a>
<br>
<br>
7) <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://github.com/openstreetmap/osm2pgsql/blob/master/docs/lua.md">https://github.com/openstreetmap/osm2pgsql/blob/master/docs/lua.md</a>
<br>
<br>
8) <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:SomeoneElse/Your_tiles_from_osm.org">http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:SomeoneElse/Your_tiles_from_osm.org</a>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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