[OSM-talk] "Crudely-drawn pint glasses"

[bvh]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 08:56:13AM +0000, Tom Hughes wrote:
> So it is reasonable or optimal for us to maintain an infinite number
> of custom maps for third parties that want custom maps but don't want
> the hassle of rendering them?

No, we should provide tools that make it very easy to create a custom
map. Mapnik is not (yet?) that tool.

I believe Kosmos wants to fill that gap. Merkaartor is also
getting some of it : I just added an integrated gui to edit the map style
to subversion, effectively with the aim to make merkaartor a full
wysiwyg map editor/renderer combination.

And maybe someone will take up a potlatch kind of project to do this
kind of thing.

It all signals that slowly (for some of us) the focus is shifting
from gathering data to using said data.

I want to have one closing comment on the issue of the crudely drawn
pint glass. In my opinion it shows that is not always progress
to add more stuff to the default rendering rules. In this specific
case I think it is better to turn default rendering of bars _off_
and put th burden of generating maps containing that stuff to those
that actually need it, instead of the other way around.

cu bart