[OSM-newbies] why don't street names show up at zoom leveles

[Russ Nelson]

On Jul 7, 2009, at 11:37 PM, Chris Mcnally wrote:

> We should not have to pan so far to
> see major street names. The type of highway is primary.
>
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=40.68413&lon=-73.95014&zoom=16&layers=B000FTF
>
> I would like to know what to do to fix this and make the map more  
> usable.


Well, so, that layer is "Mapnik".  Its rendering is controlled by a  
"style file".  At each zoom level there are a set of conditions which  
determine what gets drawn, what gets labelled, how big is the label,  
etc.  I believe that file is stored in the OpenStreetMap SVN  
somewhere, and is consulted periodically to render new files.   
Obviously you could fetch it and change it, but I don't know what  
political process is needed to get it into production.

Yes, I agree with you that a primary road should be labelled once in  
each tile.

--
Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson
russ at cloudmade.com - Twitter: Russ_OSM - http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson