[OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Carto design

[Christoph Hormann]

On Friday 29 June 2018, Daniel Koc4‡ wrote:
> > All in all this is a good example for OSM-Carto being at a
> > crossroads (and having been for quite some time) between staying
> > avant-garde and pushing the boundaries of cartographic design and
> > technology or being satisfied with shuffling the options offered by
> > the cartographic mainstream within the technological framework used
> > - and which, due to Mapnik and CartoCSS being essentially
> > unmaintained, becomes more narrow and limiting every year.
>
> I don't see a crossroad here: being avant-garde in cartographical
> sense might sound cool, proud and tempting,

I did not make any assumptions on avant-garde being a positive thing 
here.  In fact for a long time i have clearly said that i think that 
OSM map design should become more pluralistic.  But historically 
OSM-Carto has been and has meant to be avant-garde, in particular also 
to justify being rendered on OSMF infrastructure.

> This style codebase is large and that might sound like causing a
> problem with maintenance, but adding more features is far less
> challenging than something as sophisticated as for example "new" road
> code - and nobody seems to be even noticing how complicated it
> became.

You are making the wrong assumption here that code complexity and 
cartographic sophistication always need to go together.  But they 
don't.  There are plenty of examples of cartographic sophistication 
being implemented without additional code complexity as well as code 
complexity being added which was cartographically a step back.  You are 
also making the wrong implicit assumption that code complexity is the 
only major factor that negatively affects developers' ability to 
implement changes.

A huge part of the code complexity in OSM-Carto has been for a log time 
in workarounds for limitations in Mapnik and CartoCSS.

And you are wrong that "nobody seems to be even noticing" complexity of 
the roads code.  At least Lucas, Paul and me have a very good idea 
about this.  And the unpaved roads rendering is not the problem here, 
the problem is the complexity of roads rendering in general.

Right now OSM-Carto is in the position of a quasi-monopoly in what it 
does.  A potential competitor would need to mobilize a tile serving 
infrastructure at least roughly on the same level as that of the OSMF 
to seriously challenge it.  And this is quite a big hurdle.  This 
creates a pretty stable comfort zone where OSM-Carto can rest idly even 
if the world of digital cartography is progressing around it.

Ultimately this is not the question on what is the right development 
model for an open map design project.  This is about the almost 
complete lack of competitive pressure to make sure whatever development 
model is used it is challenged to deliver the best results (or be 
abandoned because it is unable to do so) - which is not happening for 
OSM-Carto right now.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/