[OSM-dev] Coastlines

[Martijn van Oosterhout]

On 2/25/07, Joerg Ostertag (OSM Munich/Germany)
<openstreetmap at ostertag.name> wrote:
> If we want to combine efforts, i think it would be the easiest to include the
> complete Costlines into the Main OSM Database. This way we only have one
> Dataset to work with. And not every rendering engine has to deal separately
> with these issues.

That's a possibility, except it's nowhere near done yet. I can render
the entire world on my laptop long before the coastlines are loading
into OSM.

However, you talk about each rendering engine not having to deal with
the issues seperately. They don't need to if it's not in the system.
There's no flexibility needed: sea is blue, land is white. It seems to
me infinitly easier to centralise that and let the rendering engines
concentrate on the variation: osmarender vs mapnik.

In any case, it's moot: until >50% of coastlines worldwide are in OSM,
it's not worth reading them from there... When it hits 85% I'll
happily switch sources.

Have anice day,
-- 
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog at gmail.com> http://svana.org/kleptog/