[OSM-dev] OSM + renderer

[Artem Pavlenko]

Hello everyone,

Firstly,  thanks for all your efforts to provide free street level 
data!  Great  project!

I was following the thread about rendering maps and I thought I could 
contribute here as well.  I'm the developer of a c++/python mapping 
toolkit (http://mapnik.org) which amongst other things can render 
high-quality maps from various datasets. I had a very brief chat with 
SteveC at the UK mash-up and I think he was into the idea to try Mapnik 
to render OSM.

Here is list of some relevant  features of Mapnik:
1. Anti-aliasing
2. Rule based styling/filtering (modelled on OGC SLD but there is much 
more..)
3. Automatic text/label/shield placement resolution
4. Text following lines etc. (contributed by www.10east.com)
5. Transparency
6. Cross-platform ( Linux + win32)
7. On-fly coordinate systems transformations
8. Seamless access of large datasets

I hacked a very simple web demo at http://media.mapnik.org/tiling.html.  
Have a  look!
I think there could a good fit between OSM and Mapnik and I wonder if 
anyone out there agrees with me?
In any case it would be great to hear any comments and questions.

Cheers,
Artem