[OSM-talk] Cambridge complete!

[David Earl]

Thanks (and to everyone else too)!

I was indeed thinking of media in producing a poster map. I've been
experimenting today following the bits of advice, and understand what to do
now - it was just the last link in the chain I was missing.

I also noticed the missing M11 bit earlier on (needless to say that wasn't
mine on a bike!) - (I was sure I'd fixed that once). I'll certainly take
your advice about proof reading.

I hadn't worried too much about upside down street names as mapnik does them
automatically and much better, and osmarender screws up street names on
short streets anyway. But I will just go over those now as I will be using
osmarender for this. I just had an offer from a friend to use their A1
plotter which will allow me to produce a printed proof (I had intended to
use www.photobox.co.uk which goes up to 75 x 50 cm).

I was also going to modify the osmarender control file before I produce it
to add a few things (like schools) that it doesn't currently do, and change
the red/green over for trunk/primary highways.

David




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Chilton [mailto:S.L.Chilton at mdx.ac.uk]
> Sent: 19 January 2007 13:38
> To: David Earl; talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: RE: [OSM-talk] Cambridge complete!
>
>
> David,
>
> May I add my congratulations on what I think is a superb effort. If you
> virtually singled-handedly (bikedly?) mapped all of Cambridge in such a
> short timeframe you should perhaps get the first OSM Phylis Pearsall
> Award (lady who mapped London by foot for first A-Z).
> A press release would be excellent acknowledgement of your efforts, and
> give due credit to the project. You actually do want printed output for
> media interest, so get a poster done and possibly try to get it
> displayed in some prominent place (University, Central Library foyer,
> Cycle Campaign HQ, etc).
> One piece of advice if you commit to paper, and that is to thoroughly
> proof-read the content first. Once printed in poster form someone will
> soon spot errors that are there, it is natural and first thing that
> people look for.
> So thoroughly check things yourself (you have the knowledge), and
> preferably follow standard cartographic practice and get someone else to
> proof-read afterwards. Over these 3 months you will have been too close
> and may miss something by being too familiar. A new eye often spots
> things. I think the detail is remarkable, but there WILL be visible
> errors. For instance, someone has done soemething to the M11 since the
> slippy map tiles were rendered. The west carriageway between the A603
> and the A10 has reverted to segment rather than way notation, and will
> show as such if re-rendered. There may be other things - I spotted one
> segment, some upside down type and a couple of tbc notes in a very brief
> whirl around.
> You can download the relevant data to JOSM, output as a data file and
> render the result in SVG as Dirk suggested, it just takes time and
> processing power. Download the central area at zoom=12 and then pan out
> to get the extent you require and download that and render the result.
> Over lunch I did just that and it produced a data file (the saved XML
> file) of 4.3mB and a rendered SVG of 8.7mB. I can send you the resulting
> files if you wish. One word of warning though, remember that if at
> anytime you put the SVG through Inkscape that it does the annoying base
> line shift for road text. Someone on the list came up with a workaround
> for this the other day, but as it involved editing font files it wasn't
> really for me. IMO the baseline shift spoils the result and is very
> frustrating (it bugs me to see it on the online Nestoria maps).
> Having done all that find a printer that can output a poster size final
> result. NB: Keep it vector rather than go to a bitmap intermediary
> format.
> Well done again, and let us all know how things pan out (could be a pun
> there).
>
> Cheers
> STEVE