[OSM-dev] Status of the Mapnik stylesheets

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 11/13/2012 11:36 PM, Tom MacWright wrote:
> There is no
> way to 'just do it' until the style is actually maintained in GitHub,
> actually welcomes contributions, and has active maintainers.

Point 3 ("active maintainers") is undoubtedly true.

Point 2 ("welcome contributions") is slightly difficult with the style 
as we do expect a certain amount of cartographic consistency. The Mapnik 
style is not something where people can scratch their personal itch by 
adding an icon or dash pattern for whatever they want rendered and then 
believe it will be added just like that; they ought to talk to the 
maintainers (see point 3) before. - This sounds rather obvious; you 
wouldn't change the design of a software package maintained by someone 
else and not talk to them before. But because it is so easy to e.g. add 
an icon, people are tempted to just "fire off" a patch and this later 
turns out to be a waste of time because it doesn't fit the overall concept.

So yes, welcome contributions, but maybe one should have a "so you want 
to contribute to the style" document that suggests certain processes.

Point 1 is purely a matter of taste; people are "just doing it" with 
trac as well (and suffering from 2/3 there too).

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"