[ gpsdrive ] Mapnik osm.xml

[info at 4x4falcon.com]

Hi All,

I've been having a play arround with what's shown using the current
osm.xml file.

Firstly I found that tracks are not shown because the tracktype field is
not put into the database by osm2pgsql.

The <Elsefilter /> is not used for tracks and I think this is because
mapnik ignores the whole style.  If I comment out the tracktype filters
and the Elsefilter and just provide a generic style for tracks then they
are shown correctly.  Some others may have this problem as well, I'm still
looking.

But this got me to thinking should we have multiple osm.xml template files
to show different things.  So I made up some, osm.show_tracks.xml,
osm.show_contours_50m_shapefile.xml, osm.show_contours_50m_postgis.xml,
osm.show_contours_10m_shapefile.xml, osm.show_contours_10m_postgis.xml.

All of these are pretty obvious what they do and yes contours do work (use
the methods on mapnik.org) but very slowly and you need lots of disk space
(approx 40Gb for postgis for Australia).  Although with map caching on it
is only slow the first time.

So should we have an option to allow the user to select which osm.xml file
to use, similar to selecting which way.txt file to use so they can make up
there own or list each with a tooltip as to what they do and just have it
as a radio button selection.

Also is there going to be a release soon?

Cheers
Ross