[OSM-dev] Mapnik XML file?

Andreas Volz lists at brachttal.net
Fri Sep 7 17:52:17 BST 2007


Am Thu, 6 Sep 2007 19:13:56 -0400 schrieb Christopher Schmidt:

> On Fri, Sep 07, 2007 at 12:12:14AM +0200, Andreas Volz wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > where is the Mapnik XML file and the icons in SVN that are used to
> > render the official map?
> 
> I think this is what you're looking for:
> http://svn.openstreetmap.org/applications/rendering/mapnik/

Thanks for the link.

I'm very interested in a recent XML file for Mapnik. I develop a Mapnik
based car-navigation system. But I'm not happy with the supported
number of POI's in the official file. For this reason I did many local
changes and the official and my personal XML file have some
differences. I do also not like the OSM Mapnik XML file, because the
image path is /home/steve/symbols/. I've some ideas and questions:

What is the current way of changing the Mapnik XML file? I assume at
first a definition should go its way from proposed feature/icon to the
map features site. But who does then insert it into the XML file?

I think a wiki is great for large amounts of more or less unordered
information. But I think it's abused for the map features "database".
it was good for the start, but not any longer. I'll try to explain you
my idea.

At first the features are collected in a database. Then there's a clear
and well defined state for each feature. The application should be web
based. Example:

1) Someone proposes a new feature.
   a) Key, Value, Element, Comment, Example, images are stored in a
      database
   b) state=proposed for this database element

2) The voting starts at a specified date.
   a) all voting registered users get a reminder email
   b) each vote is saved in the database
      Wiki could still be user for discussion if needed
   c) If voting end date is reached it get state=approve or
      state=disapprove in the database

3) A osm.xml is created (e.g. weekly) from this database.

4) Some nice HTML pages should be created to visualize and manage the
database. But I'm not a very experienced web designer. :-(

This will ensure that the process of features and proposed features is
cleaner and much faster. I've seen much bad stuff with the current way.
There are some approved features and someone simply removed them
without any discussion. There're a lot of features without a starting
vote for month. Or there're approved features that nobody copies to the
approved features page or into the Mapnik (or osmarender) file. It's a
complete mess and I don't like it. Perhaps other people think the same
about the current situation.

Another first and simple step is to move the Mapnik data
from /home/steve/symbols/ to /usr/share/osm/symbols or similar. This
would save some useless sed work without hurting someone.

What do you think about these ideas?

regards
Andreas




More information about the dev mailing list