[OSM-dev] Notes - OSM improvements BoF at SOTM PDX

[Dane Springmeyer]

On Oct 16, 2012, at 8:39 AM, Eric Marsden wrote:

>>>>>> "fr" == Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> writes:
> 
>>> - Should SVG export be replaced with something else, or improved in
>>> Mapnik enough to be worthwhile?
> 
>  fr> Definitely a question that I am often asked - keep in mind that there
>  fr> are two kinds of SVG, that which conforms to the standard and that which
>  fr> is readable by Adobe Illustrator, and most people actually need the
>  fr> second. I always tell people to use Maperitive for SVG export but it's
>  fr> not open source and only works on limited areas.
> 
>  Mapnik's SVG output is not very usable in an editor such as Inkscape,
>  because objects are not "logically" grouped. It would be fantastic if
>  this could be improved, and if landuse/roads/buildings/public
>  transport/labels etc. were split into separate SVG layers (likewise
>  for PDF output, in fact). I guess this would require dedicated
>  backends, instead of benefiting from Cairo's nice multi-output
>  features.

Yes, a custom, better SVG renderer in Mapnik is planned.

We have recently made major steps on fundamentals for this renderer, notably
Mapnik master now has a solid geometry framework for clipping, simplifying,
smoothing, and serializing as SVG. We've had a stub in place for custom SVG renderer
for a while, but the lack of these things held it back. The next steps is to return to updating it
and then adding grouped layer support.

Dane