[OSM-talk] Freemap in Mercator

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Wed, Jul 05, 2006 at 09:18:55AM +0100, Ben Gimpert wrote:
> On Tue,  4 Jul 06 @12:07pm, Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> > Well, I spent a total of about 20 hours trying to work out how the
> > OpenStreetMap "WMS" works, and I spent an hour setting up the data in
> > Mapserver. I think the only thing that really requires persistence is
> > working with the current server-side code: Using the API is actually
> > really easy (so long as you're querying specific items: querying for a
> > map?bbox call was too slow to be useful at the time), but writing code
> > that is suitable for committing to OpenStreetMap SVN is not easy.
> > 
> > Redoing what OSM has done for rendering in Mapserver is way easier -- 
> > but it depends on working against a static data dump, which is not 
> > appropriate for the homepage given the current frequency of these 
> > dumps. (Steve seems to think this may be changing in the near future.)
> 
> Firstly, your Mapserver / OSM integration rocks.
> 
> But your effort estimates are so much in the eyes of the beholder!  I
> guarantee I would initially be like a monkey doing a math problem trying
> to make heads-or-tails of the Mapserver code (20 hours), while OSM's
> server-side Ruby seems cake in comparision (1 hour).

But you shouldn't need to make heads or tails of the mapserver *code* --
that's the point. It's a well-developed, well maintained, seperate
rendering engine. OpenStreetMap has no need to be in the business of
creating/writing/etc. rendering engines. It needs to render data. That's
possible without creating your own unique tools to do it.

However, I was pointing out *my* personal investment -- perservering
enough to create the mapserver-based rendering was not the trick.
Perservering enough not to firebomb the OSM subversion server was ;)

I also think that the new renderer controls -- simple text files,
example sent to the list earlier today -- are certainly likely to allow
more people to control the rendering of the data. Add in the fact that
the Boston OSM crowd has plans to get together this weekend and wrote an
osmarender->mapfile converter, and soon you'll have anyone who can write
stylerules for osmarender able to control the output of the OSM map.

Hopefully, this will allow more involvement in controlling the way the
rendering looks, less need to write complex rendering code, and more
support for standards, as Mapserver is able to act as a WMS or WFS
server, serving up the data in any format from gif to png to flash to
SVG.

I hope that the new era of rendering will make things easier for people,
as well as making the maps more attractive (as people contribute) and
informative for people who are new to the project. And if I'm wrong,
hell, it's in SVN: We can always go back to the old way of doing things.

-- 
Christopher Schmidt
Web Developer