[Talk-us] Proposal: Sunset ref=* on ways in, favor of relations

[Paul Norman]

On 11/7/2015 10:18 AM, Kevin Kenny wrote:
> I find lately that it needs a patched Mapnik, because Mapnik (sensibly)
> went to a read-only database connection, and one of Phil's stored
> procedures modifies the database the first time that a shield cluster
> is requested. One of these times I'll fix it.
>
> I'm a little disappointed that none of the 'standard' renderers
> picked this up. 

Phil's demo was an excellent proof of concept of pictorial shields from 
route relations, but isn't something that can be reasonably incorporated 
into a stylesheet as-is. 
https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/596 is the 
OpenStreetMap Carto issue for shields from relations, 
https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/508 is the 
one for pictorial shields.

When matching shield colours to highway types, it becomes necessary use 
fairly complicated SQL to get route relation information[1]. It's 
complex enough that it might be a barrier to merging a pull request. 
There is an osm2pgsql issue[2] that would make it simpler, but no one 
has expressed an interest in taking that on.

With no one stepping up to work on the issue, nothing will change. I 
can't speak with certainty on what other stylesheets have planned, but I 
don't expect the HOT style, osm FR, OSM German Carto, OSM Bright or any 
other open-source style to be any closer to an implementation, and I 
think the proprietary stylesheets are the same.

[1]: 
https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/596#issuecomment-56258422
[2]: https://github.com/openstreetmap/osm2pgsql/issues/230