[OSM-talk] Getting highway refs onto the mapnik slippy map layer

[Tom Chance]

Ahoy,

On Fri, 5 Oct 2007 13:32:33 +0100, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemeD.net>
wrote:
> OSM prioritises suburb names over road numbers. This is sensible at  
> that scale. It's more helpful to know where (say) Hammersmith and  
> Hendon are, than that some indistinguishable road somewhere in the  
> centre of London is the A4200.
[...] 
> As a general issue of style, Google have unashamedly adopted a  
> "streetmap" style, and all their other data is utterly subservient to  
> this. We have, I think, a more balanced approach that reflects the  
> greater richness of our data. I would be a little ethically unsettled  
> if we were to adopt a Google-like rendering which removed railways to  
> gain greater importance for roads!

I agree completely with the spirit of this contribution from Richard, as a
pedestrian / cyclist / rail user / human being I find Google maps
completely awful.

One additional thought on London as an example - ideally it would show the
names of places, the motorways and a few key trunk roads leading into the
city along with the circular trunk roads at zoom level 10. This is a human
judgement, not easy to do with Mapnik rules I suspect!

King regards,
Tom