[OSM-talk] Vector rendering on the client?

[Greg]

A newb question:

I think I'm on safe ground with my presumption that maps are recorded and 
stored in vector format. I observe that whan I try to _use_ the map (on 
Firefox 3 on SuSE 10.3/Linux) it takes a looooong time to render and does so 
in a bitmap format. 

Since my browser is able to render SVG natively (albeit a subset of the full 
SVG spec), is there a way to offload some of the processing burden from the 
server and retrieve maps in vector format. 

It strikes me that there should be some considerable advantages to doing this 
(if it's not already available :o)   ) Not least would be resolution 
independence. quicker zooming and, of particular interest to me, the ability 
to show/hide/make-translucent chosen features by category/name/layer/type/&c.

Clearly there are some technical issues, such as how much of the detail to 
download at each zoomed level (Don't need to specify the pavement widths or 
even the existence of their host roads on a view of a continent) but I 
presume AJAXy technology can incrementally add/remove detail into/from the 
SVG DOM, on the zoom request

<excuse>I guess I'm being a bit lazy and putting in a feature request without 
the prior research</excuse> but <hope>I'm sure you'll be kind and let me know 
in a kind and considerate way </hope>

Cheers

Greg
(UK)