[OSM-dev] Rendering Chain for api.dev.osm?

Tom Hughes tom at compton.nu
Wed Apr 21 09:02:20 BST 2010


On 21/04/10 08:43, Frederik Ramm wrote:

>      I was wondering whether it is feasible to set up some kind of Mapnik
> rendering chain for the api.dev system. The backdrop to this is a number
> of recent discussions on the German mailing lists where people would
> like to not only test their selfmade editor against a test API, but
> sometimes they would also like to see how certain edits come through on
> a standard Mapnik map.

That smells to me of people wanting to play around and work out how to 
tag things to make them render in a particular way which is completely 
at odds with our basic premise that people should tag for what is there 
rather than for how it (currently) renders.

> Currently, we offer no dump or diff services on the dev API, so even if
> someone was capable of running their local Mapnik instance they couldn't
> download the data. Ideally though, we'd even be offering some kind of
> Mapnik rendering for the data so people don't have to install the stuff
> themselves.
>
> It is clear that we do not have the resources for a full-blown system
> with world-wide rendering and planet dumps and diff updates and whatnot,
> but maybe we could hack something together somehow which makes the dev
> API usable for a wider range of try-out tasks.
>
> Perhaps an idea for the upcoming hack weekend?

Well one problem is that it's currently very hard, if not impossible, to 
set up mod_tile in a way that would allow each user on dev to do tile 
rendering under their virtual hosts whilst still being secure etc.

It would certainly be nice if somebody could address that, or maybe 
tirex can do it instead? I haven't looked at this problem since tirex 
came out.

The dev apis are slightly different of course, and are setup in a 
slightly different way so probably could be done with mod_tile as it 
exists if we wanted.

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
http://compton.nu/




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