[OSM-dev] Units in the Mapnik .xml file?

[Dave Stubbs]

On 01/11/2007, Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping at web.de> wrote:
> Richard Fairhurst schrieb:
> > Ulf Lamping wrote:
> >
> >> NO!!! The real entry barrier is a lot of people with IMHO strange
> >> opinions how things should be. I remember something like: "We don't want
> >> to have too much details in the map - even at zoomlevel 17" is one of
> >> the reasons that completely drove me away from doing anything in the
> >> osmarender / mapnik regard.
> >>
> > That's not strange - that's the essence of good cartography.
> >
> I know.
>
> BTW: Your "Why mashups Suck (and Cartography Matters)" presentation at
> SOTM2007 was brilliant in that regard - thanks for this!
>
> Unfortunately, currently the barrier to build your own maps with OSM
> data is too high for most people (even developers). Hopefully, this will
> change as OSM becomes even more prominent :-)
> > Personally I see Osmarender as the "community" map and the Mapnik
> > layer as "OSM's answer to Google Maps", which would suggest that the
> > place for completeness is Osmarender. But as it's not a project I'm
> > involved in, it's not really any of my business.
> >
> So basically we have now: two maps trying to be the nicest looking maps
> on earth - and in the end both looking more or less like a google map clone.
>
> But what we don't have is an "official showcase" what you could *really
> do* with the map data - being better than google maps. And bringing to
> the "official osm maps" a feeling of "there's a lot more than streets in
> osm" would be at least one way to do it ...

There's the cycle map too [1].

For the record the infrastructure to cope with that includes a 2.5
year old athlon64 3400+ box called beerwarmer which lives under the
stairs, and a cheap hosting account to put the tiles on. The tile.osm
setup is obviously way better, but overkill for what most people need.

I agree it might be nice to show-case some of the more successful uses
of the data from the main page. Patches welcome I'm sure... it's only
HTML. We also have the wiki front page which is already linked off of
the map page.

Dave


[1] http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/osm