[OSM-talk] Mapnik tileset coherency issues

[Dave Stubbs]

On 18/10/2007, Patrick Weber <p.weber at ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hi list
>
> These comments are from a total newcomer to OSM, so please if this issue
> has been beaten to death before, ignore me.
>
> Mapnik's tileset gets updated once a week on Wednesday's, is that right?
> I wondered how long the update of the whole tileset takes, as I can see
> now on Thursday morning, that depending on the zoom level,  changes are
> included, and when zooming in, they disappear again. Also, between tile
> boundaries, changes might appear and thus new roads get cut off.
> Now I believe this can be a bit disconcerting for casual browsers of
> OSM, that dont understand the whole updating process going on behind the
> scenes, and "might" make them think less of OSM's data quality than it
> really is.
>
> As I see it, Mapnik is the "production" tileset, the official face of
> OSM, versus OsmaRender T at H is for map editors who want to check their
> updates and people wanting the latest data. My point is then, that
> Mapnik should be an attempt to present a coherent view of the OSM data.
> Thats where I think the updating artefacts become an issue.
>

I just retrieved this screenshot from an e-mail I sent to a friend on
13th October 2006 (just one year ago) entitled "Wow! the tile server
is working!"
http://dev.openstreetmap.org/~random/old-tile-server.jpg

This era of cheap and ubiquitous pretty tiles spoils the present newbies :-)