[talk-au] cities changed to towns

[Steve Bennett]

Hi Richard,
  IMHO, going down the path of creating a separate rendering platform
just for Australian maps is a bad idea:

a) most Australian users will never hear of it, and continue to use
websites and mobile apps derived from the standard
Mapnik/Cloudmade/openstreetmap.org/...
b) it would divert effort/attention away from fixing data for those platforms.

The potential benefits, on the other hand, of supposedly "tagging for
the renderer" by using the tags place=city, place=town etc in a
regionally-appropriate way (ie, tagging large towns as place=city) are
high, the effort is low, and the potential harm is low.

Let's be a little bit pragmatic here. This is one of the reasons why
Google Maps does so well - it solves actual *problems* (bad rendering)
with pragmatic solutions, and doesn't twist itself in knots trying to
satisfy high-minded ideals.

Steve

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 2:25 AM, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 11:16 PM, Nick Hocking <nick.hocking at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Richard wrote
>>
>>     "Take a shot at creating rendering rules that fit your use case!  :-)"
>>
>> I'm with John on this one - especially for the case of Australia.  Maybe
>> we need a special renderer for Australia.  Just recently I managed to get
>> some new mappers interested in mapping in rural NSW.
>>
>> They have started on the Wyndham area (which was just about completely
>> unmapped, and they are having the same problem as John. I,E when they want
>> to see Wyndham and it's neighbouurs (Candelo and Cathcart) at the same time
>> on a map, OpenStreetMap shows almost nothing since they are too far apart.
>>
>> We really need a smart renderer that determines (for each tile in each
>> zoom level) what are the most significant objects/ways in that tile/zoom and
>> makes sure that they are rendered (even if they happen to be hundred mile
>> long dirt tracks). Also if the major places in the tile are only
>> localities,hamlets or villages then they should be rendered. That way we
>> would not be tempted to elevate a village to a town just to make the map
>> usable.
>
>
> Largely, I think that removing the temptation to elevate a village to a town
> is an education problem, not a rendering problem.  "Don't tag for the
> renderer" is part of it and "look at this awesome transit map" is another
> part.  Back to creating a specialty rendering that is smarter about sparse
> areas.
>
> I don't think that the smart sparse renderer is impossible.  In fact, a new
> feature was discussed on the mapnik list this week, transformation plugins,
> that may be helpful.  Transformation plugins allow you to analyze and
> transform the data before rendering, so that might just be the place to
> decide which place= to render at which size / logo / prominence.   So if it
> interests you, have a go at it.
>
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