[OSM-newbies] Rendering on the PC

[john whelan]

This may not be the ideal place to post the question but I'll ask it anyway.

When I use JOSM it downloads the tiles I'm after then uploads the changes
I've made afterwards.

Most people tend to look at the same bit of the world repeatedly.

The idea would be an OSM aware program that sits on the PC similar to Google
Earth.  It would grab the information from OSM and cache it for next time.
Next time it would query to get any updates and then just download the
updates.

The program would also allow items to be selected for display, same concept
as Google Earth, place names, cycle routes etc.  This would allow a smaller
packet to be returned to the PC if we only sent the requested information.

The program would be capable of printing maps.

The advantages would be lower server and internet traffic.  Because we are
using PC resources we can let the user select what is to be rendered and how
much time they want to spend rendering rather than making arbitrary
decisions on the server based renderers.

So the question is is there such a program today?

If not how does one nudge someone to build it?

Thanks John
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