[Talk-ca] Merkaartor and WMS layers

[Bob Dustan]

I use Merkaartor and WMS works for me.  Here's how I set it up.  The wiki
page http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Land_Information_Ontario has some
useful WMS URLs.  These URLs apply to Merkaartor just as they do to JOSM.

In the WMS servers setup dialogue box, I copy/pasted the desired URL from
the wiki page (see below) into the Server Url field, typed a name in the
Name field, and clicked the Add button.  Then I clicked the Ok button to
dismiss the dialogue box.

In the Layers pane, you should see a Map layer.  Its title will begin with
"Map - ".  This is where you choose which WMS layer to display.  Right-click
on the Map layer.  Then choose "WMS Adapter" and finally choose the WMS
layer that you set up in the previous step.  All of the custom WMS layers
appear under "WMS Adapter".  I suggest you start with item 1 below as this
WMS server is reasonably responsive.

The ones I used are:

1. the URL under the heading "Data Access - WMS Layers".  This covers all of
Canada and includes roads, lakes, rivers, elevation contours, etc.
2. the URL under the heading "Infrastructure WMS".  This is Ontario only and
includes roads and road names.
3. the URL under the heading "Topography". This is Ontario only and includes
lakes, rivers, elevation contours, etc.

The first one is not bad for speed but 2 and 3 are painfully slow.  All of
the WMS servers in the wiki page are configurable so you can add or delete
features as you see fit.

There is a serious bug with version 0.16 of Merkaartor -- it doesn't display
the WMS layer.  So make sure you are using 0.16.1 (this is the current
release at present) or 0.15.3 (that version also worked for me).

Also, there is a mailing list for Merkaartor:
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/merkaartor/ .  It may not hurt to
provide your opinion of the documentation (in a positive way of course :-)
).

Hope this helps,
Bob
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