Mapnik News

Well overdue, but here is some exciting news. Aaron Mitti and Vincent Spader have joined the Mapnik development team and done a brilliant job improving text rendering. As a result we now have 'follow line' text placement and 'ShieldSymbolizer - combined label/text - very useful for things like motorways. A big thank-you to Aaron and Vince!

I've created a couple of 'Google Maps' demos to demonstrate these and other new features:

The first uses datasets from GeoGratis (Canada) and the second is based on the entirely free OpenStreetMap. Great project! I might get myself a GPS and join in.

Tiles for both demos are rendered with simple Python script using Mapnik's bindings and added as a custom layer to the by now familiar GMap2 interface.

Recently I've been able to focus again on Mapnik, and there should more news very soon. Stay tuned!

Posted by artemp on 30 October 2006.