[OSM-talk] osmarender slippy map rendering

[Abigail Brady]

On 4/26/07, Bruce Cowan <bruce.cowan at dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-04-26 at 10:14 +0100, Tom Chance wrote:
> > Actually, the population-based definition is still controversial.
>
> Indeed, Mallaig [1] is only a small village, but it at the end of a
> Primary Route, and is the place for the Skye, Canna, Rùm, Muck and Eigg
> ferries.  Thanks to this, it is an important place, but is only rendered
> as a village.

A good algorithm for choosing appropriate placenames to go in a
limited space will want, at least
*population (not necessarily of the administrative area, but maybe the
general metropolitan catchment area - Manchester beats Salford)
*administrative significance (Winchester beats Basingstoke or Eastleigh)
*formal status
*historic importance (ie Newcastle beats Gateshead or Sunderland)
*status as major transport hub (Dover beats Canterbury)

and then to assign various weighting factors to these, depending upon
the purpose of the map...  For extra points, it would want to lower
the threshold where towns are small/otherwise-uninteresting (e.g. if
you move Bedford to Cornwall, it would appear sooner, and if you moved
Carlisle to central Lancashire, it would appear later).

-- 
Abi