[Talk-ca] Can-Amera border, states and provinces.

Richard Weait richard at weait.com
Sun Aug 16 19:35:40 BST 2009


On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 12:36 PM, James Ewen<ve6srv at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 12:08 PM, Richard Weait<richard at weait.com> wrote:
>
>> I think the provincial / state borders will continue to be yucky on
>> the main map until mapnik supports rendering different style sheets
>> per region / country.
>
> My thoughts exactly, but does the OSM project support
> continent/country wide style sheets? I suspect not, so the next step
> would be to figure out who to query about this, and whether it would
> be concept that would be supported. Would this be something that would
> be up to the end user?

Well we are all the OSM project, so regional styles would have some
support; you and me at least. ;-)  How to implement it?  That's a
question.

> If understand the concept, the main slippy map is just a place to show
> what is in the database, and it would be up to the end user to render
> tiles and create a display mechanism for their own use.

So, IF mapnik / osmarender supported regions style sheets,
and IF regional style sheets existed for USA and Canada,
and IF the Foundation / server team decided to support the idea,
then the main site could serve regional tiles to all who visit.

I think that the first two points are the tricky ones.

>> We, in North America, get to see what is
>> essentially a European style sheet, and as those countries are
>> smaller, rendering their states / provinces at zoom 3 is just as
>> stupid as not rendering ours at zoom 3.
>
> Yes, I agree that there's no way that we can come up with a style
> sheet that will work everywhere.

Well it won't be ideal to the eyes of everyone.  The current mapnik
style, for example is about a bajillion times prettier than the old
vectors and 8 colours from early on in the project.  SteveC (if I
remember correctly) put up a slide at SotM showing the old rendering.
The difference and progress is nothing short of stunning.

Thank you, Steve Chilton and other cartographers!

> I think that's why the mantra "Don't
> tag for the renderers" has come to be. People are trying to tag things
> so they render on the slippy map in a manner in which they would like
> to see.

> I think that some of that is being done already anyway, since the
> major highways in Alberta at least have been bumped up from Primary to
> Trunk, and now to Motorway. With them tagged as Trunk or Motorway they
> show up until zoom level 5, with Primary roads disappearing at zoom
> level 7. You need to be at zoom level 5 before you can see the whole
> province, but the provincial admin boundary doesn't show up until zoom
> level 11.

Right.  Er, correct, and it looks wrong.

Anybody can fix this.  I played with mapnik a bit, just to see the
provinces. Please be gentle to my delicate "server" and connection.

http://weait.com/maps/?zoom=2&lat=44.70531&lon=-83.54813&layers=0B0

So with a server and connectivity, and a slightly-revised version of
the default style, anybody can serve a better OSM for Canada than the
current default.  Same goes for USA and state borders.  No
Mapnik/osmarender changes required.

Would the main OSM site connect to and defer to the regional server?
I don't know.  How would traffic compare on the regional sites?  I
don't know.

I'll keep working on the style as I learn more about mapnik.  I'll
probably have a mapnik article on my site in the next little while
too.

Best regards,
Richard




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