[OSM-talk] tagging and rendering

[Chris Jones]

> I don't think we want another server. I can already demonstrate it:
> I am currently experimenting with binary data downloads for my mobile 
> OSM viewer, mom <http://mom.poco.org.uk/>. I need data for scales from 
> 3 (just coastlines and country boundaries for enormous areas) to scale 
> 15 (almost everything in a limited area) and until there is a binary 
> API the data has to be sourced as XML then parsed to binary. The 
> standard OSM API does not have any level-of-detail filtering so I am 
> using XAPI. To get data for a particular scale I have to make several 
> calls to the XAPI for each feature group (natural, highway, waterway, 
> ...) in turn, and each call takes quite a bit of setting up in the 
> code. If, for example, the feature types were structured using a 
> numerical system such that  so that all natural features began with 0, 
> all highways with 1, etc, but everything needed at scales smaller than 
> 5 ended with numbers smaller than 3 (eg. coastlines: 01; trunk roads: 
> 12) I could make a simple call for features less than *3.
At some point there is still going to have to be a map between the 
freeform tags and your numbering scheme.. your example makes me think 
you simply want someone else to implement and maintain it so your 
application becomes easier to code.

Have you considered processing the Mapnik or Osmarender style rules to 
decide what to include/exclude at each scale?

-- 
Chris Jones, SUCS Admin
http://sucs.org