[OSM-talk] cadastre, ways, rendering

[Ben Ward]

On 23/01/07, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> > The renderer will
> > then produce nice maps (and that is what it is all about): it will add
> > in the middle of each segment the highway reference, like so:
> >
>
> I strongly disagree.


+1 from me

Though I commend the efforts that have gone into making the project look
professional and palatable on the outside, nice maps doesn't really seem to
me to be the ultimate aim.  It's rare someone says "that's an ugly map,
let's make a distributed, accurate open-source project instead" (and I for
one prefer a nice purple OS Landranger spread out on the table if we're
talking about aesthetics).

If someone came to me and said we were just going to make nicely rendered
maps from it, I probably wouldn't bother. But if it's of sufficient data
quality that we can produce great print maps, online slippy maps, layers for
GIS applications, amenity searches and route planning data then I'd say it
was worth all the hassle.

However, while we're on the subject of making good looking maps, it'd be
good to get some input from actual printed map cartographers (eg. A-Z,
Ordnance Survey in the UK, Michelin) to know the best approach for massaging
of formatting for maps.  It's obvious from the convenient positioning of
text on many maps that the words have been specially located in some kind of
presentation layer which, presumably, is separated from the other data
layers. And the abbreviations on an A-Z's tiny back streets versus the index
make it clear that the presentation is separate from the data.  (
openstreetmapannotations.org anyone? ;-)

Ben

-- 
ben at crouchingbadger.com | http://crouchingbadger.com
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