[OSM-dev] [OSM-talk] "Crudely-drawn pint glasses"

[Artem Pavlenko]

taking this to dev
On 30 Jan 2008, at 11:57, bvh wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 11:47:15AM +0000, Artem Pavlenko wrote:
>>> No, we should provide tools that make it very easy to create a  
>>> custom
>>> map. Mapnik is not (yet?) that tool.
>> Mapnik is that tool and it's also free and easy to use ;) . It is
>> used in many exciting projects to generate custom maps e.g
>
> Granted, I don't know a lot about mapnik, but I was under the  
> impression
> that to edit your styles you need to either author an XML file
> (which incidently I want to be able to read in merkaartor and
> I wanted to send you an email regarding more detailed documentation
> on that) or do Python programming. That is not 'easy to use'
> for the use case that this thread started : a one off quick
> screengrab for a simple website.

Yes, Mapnik is a library and it consumes styles/rules/datasources in  
XML format.
To make it easy to use there is a need for GUI.
>
>>> Merkaartor is also
>>> getting some of it : I just added an integrated gui to edit the map
>>> style
>>> to subversion, effectively with the aim to make merkaartor a full
>>> wysiwyg map editor/renderer combination.
>> If you're serious about rendering high-quality maps and I believe
>> you're using qt4 in your project, why don't you join forces and work
>> on Mapnik GUI ?
>
> Well, I am certainly very interested in being able to read/write
> mapnik rendering style files. Consider this a request for
> documentation on that.
>
> I am not sure if I am ready to use mapnik as the render engine for
> the editor part though. Editings put some special constraints on the
> renderer and on the structure of the data. Unfortunatly I don't  
> know enough
> about mapnik if it flexible enough to adapt. But I am certainly open
> to the possibility.
I don't suggest you use mapnik for rendering while editing, but you  
can. But viewing what you have just edited as a final map in real- 
time would be very smart, imo. And it is already implemented, you  
just render into QImage and draw the map . Or even  develop further  
to able to edit styles and data sources..

Artem