[OSM-dev] Slippy map's future

[Nick Whitelegg]

>This Saturday, Nick Whitelegg wrote:

>> We really need OSM to be as amenable to mashups as Google is
>> now,

>This sounds nice, but you forget that Google has immense hardware
>and manpower resources behind its services.  This doesn't scale
>for us.  However, there is a way out:

>> * The slippy map should be based off planet, to maximise performance.

>If we can make an easy to follow recipe for setting up a slippy
>map server and loading it with the latest weekly planet.osm dump,
>anybody can set up a server, tweak the software, and create their
>own experimental services.  The amount of traffic they draw will
>be independent of OSM's central hardware resources.

That is a good idea, particularly if combined with the idea that someone 
else mentioned about different servers focusing on one particular 
geographical location. Indeed, the whole of the UK is proving a bit much 
for the Freemap server (Bytemark VM) but if it only offered southern 
England between say 0.5W and 2W, and below 51.5N that would be much more 
manageable.

I *hope* (no guarantee just yet) to get PHP-ImageMagick working tonight on 
the Freemap server. If this works I'll send Steve and Nick Hill a set of 
instructions on how to get it working on the dev server. Then it'll be a 
relatively easy job for me to convert my (GD-based) Freemap code to work 
with ImageMagick and offer antialiasing and nicer line joins. This code 
can then be combined with some AJAX and OpenLayers to hopefully easily 
deploy a slippy map on any server.

Nick