[OSM-dev] Nestoria Tiles Write Up

[bvh]

On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 12:08:46PM +0100, Nick Whitelegg wrote:
> The other approach that could be taken is something of a departure and 
> wouldn't go via SVG at all. Some GUI toolkits (e.g. qt) apparently do nice 
> rendering. Even the JOSM mappaint rendering with a few tweaks could 
> perhaps be good enough. So one option could be a standalone OSM browser 
> (based on JOSM???) which downloads the data, renders it then uploads it to 
> a central server.

I fully intent to write a map renderer in Qt for Merkaartor once the
basic editing is done. If there is interest I can try to program it in
a way that makes it relatively easy(?) to spin it of in an 
non-interactive renderer. Qt certainly has the graphics framework to
do all this.

Using SVG is a very neat idea, but I think there are certain limitations
that can more easily be dealt with in a programming language. Think about
intelligent placing of text for example. I feel it is possible to have
heuristics that decide that a certain area of the map is too crowded,
move the text a bit away and draw a markerline to the real position.

However all this is largely untested and I don't know if it can stand
up to reality.

cu bart