[OSM-talk] Multilingual map

[D Tucny]

Hi folks,

I've been thinking about how it would be good to have the map available in
multiple languages... I think the easiest way to do this with what we have
is using a captionless base layer and transparent caption layers for each of
the languages... So... I put this thinking into practice and put together a
proof of concept at http://osm.newportcoastsoftware.com

There is a single base, captionless layer and 40 transparent caption layers,
all available only to zoom 8.

The name tags imported and used to make the different layers are...

name - The default name
name:ar - Arabic
name:cs - Czech
name:cy - Welsh
name:cz - Typo for Czech
name:da - Danish
name:de - German
name:el - Greek
name:en - English
name:eo - Esperanto
name:es - Spanish
name:fi - Finnish
name:fr - French
name:ga - Irish Gaelic
name:he - Hebrew
name:hi - Hindi (font problems)
name:hr - Croatian
name:hu - Hungarian
name:is - Icelandic
name:it - Italian
name:ja - Japanese
name:ja_rm - Romanised Japanese
name:kl - Kalaalisut (Greenlandic)
name:ko - Korean
name:la - Latin
name:lt - Lithuanian
name:lv - Latvian
name:nl - Dutch
name:pl - Polish
name:ro - Romanian
name:ru - Russian
name:sk - Slovak
name:sl - Slovenian
name:sr - Serbian
name:sv - Swedish
name:th - Thai
name:uk - Ukranian
name:zh - Chinese
name:zh_py - Chinese Pinyin
name:zh_pyt - Chinese Pinyin with tones

This isn't a list of all available languages in use, but, it was most of the
languages in use for names of countries and cities when I looked...

Issues:
The layer switcher is quite long with so many layers, so, the map div has
been set to 900px high to fully incorporate it... If less vertical space is
available, you'll get a scroll bar, if more is available, the map won't fill
the window...

The rendering of Hindi has been broken by missed fonts... It should be
rerendered in a while...

The tiles are bigger than the live site thanks to them not having been
created at 256 colours, this is due to transparency not currently working
with 256 colour tiles...

All tiles are prerendered... They don't get updated automatically and they
aren't rendered on request... So if you make changes to OSM, they won't show
up on this map for some time... Also nothing currently available beyond zoom
8, though I do plan on making certain areas with good examples of multiple
languages available at higher zooms...

This is just a proof of concept, it will likely disappear at some point...

If anyone has any suggestions, or sees any problems, let me know...

Thanks,

d
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