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

[J.D. Schmidt]

Nick Whitelegg skrev:
>> Anther solution would be on-demand mapping: the renderers, in whatever 
>> falvour, are online somewhere and you go through a dialogue to decide on 
>> an area, choose your features and then get a custom map back a short 
>> while later - either on screen or as a PDF or whatever.
> 
> Sounds a good idea. An "OSMcustommaps.org" or similar could be created, a 
> user could sign up and specify their preferences, write a Mapnik XML file 
> specific to that user and issue them with an ID, then a user could have 
> their custom rendered style simply by requesting tiles off that server. 
> Since most people probably want the standard OSM maps, it would have 
> relatively low levels of use, so  I can't see bandwidth being a major 
> issue - particularly if caching occurs.
> 
> Nick

And how and from where will they be invoiced, and in what way will the 
income be put to use in OSM ?

Or do you suggest that it should be a freebie service, provided to Joe 
Public Esq. and Jim Company Ltd in the manner of free as in both speech 
AND beer ?

I mean, if they need a leaflet with a costumized map showing all their 
store location, then ofcourse they should be able to use any and all of 
OSM-ressources(*) free of charge to make that map for their leaflet, right ?

Dutch


(*) OSM-ressources in this regard means : CPU-time, making specific 
mapnik XML stylesheets for people, getting pestered with requests for 
changes in the XML stylesheet when they find out that their company logo 
really looks bad, on the colourschema they specified for the map, and 
that their customers normally navigate through town by directions to the 
various pubs anyway, so could they have the pint-glasses brought back as 
well...

Because if they are too lazy to read the instructions on getting Mapnik 
or one of the other rendering engines up and running to generate tiles 
and maps locally, you can bet they are also too lazy to write their 
stylesheets on their own, or even read the instructions on a potential 
OSMcustommaps.org site.
I might be a cynical S.O.B, but based on multiple years dealing with 
people wanting some task done, but to lazy to do it themselves, I'm 
pretty sure that the above scenario is what will happen... ;)