[OSM-talk] Newbie - queries and usability suggestions (fwd)

[Andy Allan]

---------- Forwarded message ----------

> Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:36:47 +0000
> From: Calum Polwart <gps at wittongilbert.free-online.co.uk>
> To: Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se>
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Newbie - queries and usability suggestions
>
>
> My worry is not for me - you've probably hooked me.


Good ! :-)


>  I assume it may be
> conventional in other countries to draw roads in different colours
> etc, again would have expected to find a list of style sheets to
> achieve this!.


That's a good idea - we could have osm-features-fr.xml, so if people wanted
a french-coloured map (with motorways in green, for instance) they could use
that one. But why would you *expect* to find them? It's just that nobody has
done that *yet* - you could help out and be the first!


> However, if the slippy when it works wont draw parks etc then am I
> wasting my time putting them in at the moment... thats why it
> would be useful to see them on the slippy.


It's certainly not a waste of time! I put features in that don't render
*yet* (like allotments or even London Underground lines), but I'm sure that
they will be rendered at some point soon. There's more to OSM than just the
current slippy render list! Think of it as a nice surprise at some point
when all your detailed stuff appears one day, and you can look forward to
that.

If you want to be more proactive, there's places on the wiki and on trac
where you can find out how to suggest features to be added to the slippy
rendering list.


> OK I'm new to this but several things seem strange about the
> general approach - they've probably been considered to death in
> the past!  A tile sounds like it may be quite large (London?)  Is
> there a play off of reducing tile [...]


Tiling is complicated, and more so when there are updates to consider. Tile
sizes are based on zoom level too - go to the slippy map, and right click ->
view image on a few different zoom levels and you'll see how it all works.
So really zoomed in close tiles are really quick to render since there's not
much on each one, but there are millions of them. When you need 100km2 tiles
for viewing all of Europe, then there are fewer, but there's much more data
to render.
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