Release 2.1.0

The Mapnik team is pleased to announce the Mapnik 2.1 release! It was almost a year in the making and we have tons of new features including:

• A new framework for Style level image manipulation called Image filters.
• A new pipeline for chained coordinate transformations like clipping or smoothing called Vertex Converters
• Compositing modes at Symbolizer and (experimental) Style level. Infinite possibilities from this, see a few examples from AJ.
• Support for Style level opacity
• WKT, WKB, GeoJSON, SVG parsers and generators that can be used outside of rendering
• Data-driven SVG style transforms on svg markers and images thanks to @lightmare
• Data-driven orientation for Text, height for Buildings, and width/height for Markers.
• A new CSV input plugin
• A new GeoJSON input plugin
• A new Python input plugin
• Better text labeling through support for placement-type="list". See the docs at the bottom of this page.
• Improved Map loading speeds as well as warnings and errors

Summary and Changelog

For more details on 2.1 features and fixes see the Summary and the Changelog.

Everyone is recommended to upgrade!

Installing

With this release installing Mapnik has never been easier. For Mac users the popular Homebrew package system already includes Mapnik 2.1. Or, if you don’t want to wait for the compile just grab the one-click 64bit Framework Installer for OS X 10.6 -> 10.8.

For Ubuntu users, we have a PPA ready for you. Simply install Mapnik 2.1 like:

sudo apt-get install -y python-software-properties
echo 'yes' | sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mapnik/v2.1.0
sudo apt-get update
# install core mapnik
sudo apt-get install -y libmapnik mapnik-utils python-mapnik
# install the python binding
sudo apt-get install -y python-mapnik
# confirm mapnik-config returns 2.1.0
mapnik-config -v

And everyone can get the source from the downloads page.

Coming soon

We plan Windows binaries in the next month. We will work to provide two flavors:

1. Mapnik built with Visual Studio 2008 that will provide python bindings for python.org provided Python 2.6 and 2.7
2. Mapnik built with Visual Studio 2009 that will provide node.js bindings for nodejs.org provided Node v0.8.x

We also plan an OS X SDK installer (sometime in the next 3-4 months) that will include all headers and dependencies Mapnik uses in order to provide a drop-in development ease for XCode. Note: this SDK may instead target Mapnik 2.2.x development, we’ll see.

Try Tilemill

If you are a TileMill user, or interested in trying it out, the upcoming TileMill 0.10.0 release will use and expose Mapnik 2.1 features. Intrepid OS X and Windows are encouraged to try out the latest TileMill 0.10.x development builds available at the TileMill development snapshots download page.

Thanks!

Thanks to all the contributors and the many companies that have supported and encouraged Mapnik 2.1 development over the past year, notably: kosmosnimki, mapy.cz, mapquest, stamen, cartodb, MapBox, and many more.