[OSM-dev] Hello World

[Josh Doe]

On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 4:41 PM, Alex Barth <alex at mapbox.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 12, 2012, at 1:14 PM, Michal Migurski <mike at teczno.com> wrote:
>
>> * Create a new map style intended to be the default face of OSM, but leave the current OSM.orgMapnik style as-is. It works beautifully as an editor's basemap due to the dense inclusion of all data. Keep it, but add a new one that's for non-editors to look at.
>
> I wonder how good the current Mapnik style is for editors.
>
> Mapping in Latin America I'm for instance noticing more and more how people tag major connecting roads `highway=track` because they're unpaved instead of using an appropriate tag such as `highway=tertiary` and specifying `surface=unpaved`. Tagging for the renderer of course: the problem is that the Mapnik style completely ignores `surface=unpaved` making a significant dirt road really not look how it should on the map. I guess it's clear that there's an issue w/ the style not being maintained right now and it's unclear how to contribute to it, but based on stuff like the unpaved road example I'm starting to think that the Mapnik style does not only need a refresh esthetics wise but it being unmaintained complicates good mapping.

I think the current Mapnik style should eventually be replaced by a
CartoCSS style (hosted on GitHub) that is accessible to more
editors/cartographers (think TileMill). It should maintain the focus
of showing everything under the sun, even if it is a bit cluttered.
There's lots of great general purpose styles (MapBox Streets, Open
MapQuest) and more focused ones out there, the main OSM.org style
should be a showcase of the underlying data.

-Josh