[Tilesathome] Osmarender strength points?

[Mario Ferraro]

D Tucny ha scritto:

[or/js]
> I'm not sure why, but it gives me a grey filled box here in firefox 
> 3.0.8 under OR/JS

Thank you very much for pointing it out. I'm under firefox 3.0.8 too 
(ubuntu version) and it seems to work smoothly. Can you give another try 
and see if there are javascript errors? It should show some warnings 
(which I have to fix), but not errors. Are you using it online or 
offline from the svn? They both show the same thing?

> IMAGE and CANVAS show nothing, and if I click Encode 
> as PNG I get new OR/JS sections under them with grey filled boxes... Is 
> this one of the remaining bugs? :) or is something else needed in 
> addition to firefox that I don't have?

IMAGE and CANVAS, at first, should show nothing, that's ok.
If or/js show a grey box is perfectly normal than, if you encode it as 
PNG, IMAGE and CANVAS show grey boxes too, as they are meant to show 
what's the browser is actually showing in the box under OR/JS.
I've written the whole code to avoid any dependency, so AFAIK it should 
need only plain Firefox.

If you can, please let me know (privately or on the mailing list) if it 
raises JS errors. If you join irc, you can find me on #osm or #osm-dev 
as Merio.

[fast rendering turnaround]
> Things have changed though... a) is actually a potential negative point 
> now that mapnik updates are much more regular, the turnaround in t at h in 
> most cases is now probably longer than for mapnik...

This is the main reason why, following also thoughts of Frederik, I've 
begun or/js: in the long-term (if the community thinks it's a good idea) 
I would like to build a "one-click" contribution to tiles at home: an user 
can click a link on the slippy map and have or/js (or the XSLT, even if 
slower, I want to do some tests on it) do the rendering work in her 
browser and sending the PNG to t at h server.

[low zoom quality]
> b) is still valid, 
> as long as the low zoom update process hasn't been killed off...

I totally agree with it, low zoom in Osmarender is very useful to have a 
look at the world coverage. I will add that also higher zoom levels 
shows (now more than ever, thanks to the heavy and awesome work on 
symbols) features that Mapnik doesn't. And to me the symbols are very 
pretty :) Perhaps, IMHO, the medium zoom levels should have thinner roads.

[maplint]
> c) as 
> maplint has been enhanced to spot more problems it's value to me has 
> faded away... now the entire area I look at it filled with errors or 
> warnings, that aren't actually errors making it difficult to see if 
> there are any real errors there and at the same time a number of other 
> quality checking tools have come into being with most offering the 
> option of only viewing certain types of issue...

So there should be a "sub-layer" driven thing to do that.

[low cost entry point]
> d) is still valid, 
> choice is good...

Yes, this is the strongest point I've always thought about. I think it 
should be in some way more evident to newbie users.

> I wonder what T at H could do to give more value, what other cool things 
> could it do... to be honest I'm not sure...

This is why I'd like to stimulate some further brainstorming :)

> Regarding osmarender though, 
> it seems that your work has the potential to make osmarender more 
> heavily used outside of T at H which would seem to be a good thing :)

I hope :) Of course if someone with JS skills (or wanting to learn) 
wants to join the effort is welcome ^__^

Thanks for the reply

Cheers,
Mario Ferraro