[OSM-dev] Default map style on osm.org

Christoph Hormann chris_hormann at gmx.de
Thu Aug 29 21:03:59 UTC 2013


On Thursday 29 August 2013, Kai Krueger wrote:
> [...] It really is a rather powerful reward to see your
> effort being directly incorporated into the "in production" map
> within minutes which can and _is_ viewed by millions of people.

This i can very much agree with.

My idea of a separate data verification map was not meant as a purely 
technical display without any concern for practical usability.  I could 
also phrase it differently: Having two different but both real time 
updated maps would help communicating to the mapper that the purpose of 
the data is not just to produce a single map.  Seeing how the same 
features and tags affect the result in the two maps in different ways 
could make people more aware of this.  And for this purpose it would 
not matter too much in what ways the two map styles differ.

> Imho, the solution of cleaning up the low zoom tiles
> to "look good" for general use and then increasing or at least
> maintaining the detail on z18, z19 (and z20) is perhaps the best
> compromise we can achieve.

One problem with having a style with strong differences between zoom 
levels is that the map scale is strongly varying across the map.  z18 
at the equator is the same as z15 in northern Canada.

So when peaks for example get displayed starting with z11 and get labels 
at z13 this works nicely at low to moderate latitudes but is pointless 
at high latitudes (once you see the peak you usually see nothing but 
the peak) meaning the reward of seeing your efforts incorporated into 
the production map is much less in those areas.

Greetings,

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/



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