[OSM-talk] Mapnik tileset coherency issues

[Andy Allan]

On 10/18/07, Dave Stubbs <osm.list at randomjunk.co.uk> wrote:
> 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 :-)

I remember those days (and I suspect I'm the 'friend' mentioned
anyway) - it would go weeks between those precious half hours when we
could see anything on the website at all. Hence the featured images,
all the 'places' stuff on the wiki and pointing the url at the wiki
instead of the map...

Cheers,
Andy