[Talk-ca] Off-topic: general Canvec issues

[Brent Fraser]

Daniel,

   While this is not directly related to OpenStreetMap, I'm posting this 
here since the OSM community seems to be the most active set of public 
users of Canvec data.  The goal of this post is to improve Canvec (and 
therefore hopefully improve OSM).

   As a method of testing the latest release of Mapserver 
(http://mapserver.org/), I attempted to use Canvec v7 to render a 
CanTopo 
<http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/en/product/search.do?id=A6291EF5-F3FC-A29F-3162-DE4DB194FD38> 
style map.  See my mapserver post 
<http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/mapserver-users/2011-May/068731.html> 
for more details on my efforts.  While the issues I covered on the 
Mapserver email list are specific to Mapserver rendering shortcomings, 
there were a few other issues related to the Canvec data.

   One of the main issues I ran into was the Toponymy (TO) layer 
<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/CanVec:_Toponymy_%28TO%29>  is 
represented by point geometry preventing me from rendering the mountain 
range text (for example) in a curved manner as done in CanTopo.  Is 
there any possibility of having NRCan change the geometry to 
LINESTRING?  Or perhaps having a _TO_1580009_1 (linestring) shapefile 
for those names representing linear features  in addition to the 
existing _TO_1580009_0 (point) shapefile?

   Some of the other less serious issues (these can be handled by 
pre-processing the Canvec data):

Contour layer (FO_1030009_1):  no attribute for major/minor contours 
preventing bolding of major contours
Stream Layer (HD_1470009_1): major streams broken at tributary 
intersections preventing single label for streams

Thanks!

-- 
Best Regards,
Brent Fraser

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