[OSM-talk] Tagging FOR the renderer

[moltonel 3x Combo]

On 17/05/2015, Daniel Koć <daniel at koć.pl> wrote:
> 1. We should have some tools to let people render their own style, no
> matter how crazy. It's possible of course from the technical point of
> view (the data and tools are available and the licenses are open), but
> that is far too complicated for average Joe or Jane.

Did you even try the existing tools ? Tilemilll is very userfriendly,
and if Joe or Jane has trouble setting it up, they can just use the
MapBox instance. There's very little skill needed to start tweaking an
existing style, and the learning curve is IMHO not too steep,
considering how intrinsically complicated the task is.

> I suspect kind of P2P tools would be great, but have no clear ideas about it.

I have no idea how you'd apply P2P to map style design. It sounds like
you; ve heard of a great technology, and want to apply it to every
problem without fully understanding the technology and/or the problem.

> 2. But default map style is still underused. Reluctance to show
> "everything" on merits that it's "impossible", because it should be "a
> mess", probably does not take into account that some features may be
> rendered only on highest zoom levels.

I assure you the osm-carto devs are competent and take those things
into account. It's a design decision, they want the map to be pretty
as well, not just a show-everything endeavour. They've also stoped
rendering some things that they felt didn't match the usecase.
Nevertheless, they managed to continually increase the data density,
while making the style more eye-pleasing. Congrats to them.

That said, you really shouldn't focus too much on "the default map
style". Stop puting it on a pedestal, there are plenty of other
high-quality styles, and one size does not fit all. The fact that
anyone can make his own style (and that the data is rich enough to
warrant it) is one of OSM's strenghts. I wish we could emphasize other
syles more on osm.org.