[OSM-newbies] Missing "How To" instructions - getting a minimal map

[Thomas Wood]

2009/3/13 Akkana Peck <akkana at shallowsky.com>:
> I sent an offline response to Richard, he responded and we decided
> it might be better to have some of it on the list, so here goes:
>
> Richard Owlett writes:
>> I'm looking for an *outline* map of North America showing national,
>> state, and provincial boundaries for U.S. and Canada.
>>
>> My particular use is assisting someone else to plot some bird migration
>> data. I can see the same outline having use for geography lessons from
>> primary school thru college.
>>
>> In the past week I've spent >8 fruitless hours browsing
>> www.openstreetmap.org and its wiki.
>
> The national and US state boundaries are definitely there in
> the OSM data: they aren't drawn in the default "Mapnik" view
> on openstreetmap.org, but if you click on the + over at the top
> right and choose the Osmarender layer you'll see them.
>
> The trick is displaying them in a nice clean display with all
> the rest of the data hidden. And I'm not sure there's any app
> that can do that. The big three OSM programs, JOSM, Potlatch
> and Merkaartor, are all aimed at editing, not at letting you
> turn things off and on to make a nice clean display.
>
> Maybe your best bet is to set up a web-based view using the OSM
> databases, and then you can make stylesheets to show only what you
> want. But that's a lot of work.

The default lowzoom cloudmade render is quite nice
http://maps.cloudmade.com/?lat=38.959409&lng=-96.064453&zoom=4&styleId=1

I've also quickly made up a blank style for the higher zooms, the
border data there looks a bit wonky though
http://maps.cloudmade.com/?lat=40.979898&lng=-95.361328&zoom=4&styleId=1440


> I recently needed something similar to what you're asking for
> (a US map with state outlines, for an article illustration).
> I ended up getting an SVG image of the US from Wikimedia Commons,
> editing it in GIMP to get it down to just the state boundaries,
> then overlaying a satellite image (also from Wikimedia Commons)
> which I had to adjust with the perspective tool to get it to fit
> the projection of the SVG image.  Using OSM data would have been
> a cleaner solution, but lacking an app that can display data
> selectively, using GIMP seemed a lot easier and faster.
>

Yes, manual editing will probably offer the best result.

-- 
Regards,
Thomas Wood
(Edgemaster)