<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /></head><body style='font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif'>
<p>Fully agreed with Richard here.</p>
<p>OGC standards are important and even required by law. Other protocols are ok though, if they are in addition. If they prove to better in the future than OGC, then they might eventually replace the former. But first, they would have to prove good interoperability and that they are better.</p>
<p>Regarding vector styles:</p>
<p>I hadn't seen a complex, convincing vector style client-side rendering yet. Mapbox and Maptiler come closest - but even these two are "mickey mouse" maps compared to what national mapping agencies in our countries established in quality over decades in their printed and raster map product lines.</p>
<p>In our country, Swisstopo (the national mapping provider) experimented with vector tiles. The result:</p>
<ul>
<li>it renders slower than the raster tile maps</li>
<li>the CPU of the client is busier than with raster tiles</li>
<li>the cartographic quality is disappointing. Many years away from the original raster tile quality</li>
</ul>
<p>The main advantage of vector tiles would be that the user could switch colors - but did you ever have the need to switch colors in a we map? Defacing a map where cartographers spent a lot of time figuring out the correct color combos?</p>
<p>Replicating QGIS rendering for vector tiles outside of QGIS in a totally separate technology from qt rendering would be an interesting project, but would always be different, lagging and would be a lot of effort. But if someone finds a sponsor for that, it could be interesting.</p>
<p>Andreas</p>
<p id="reply-intro">On 2020-06-09 08:24, Richard Duivenvoorde wrote:</p>
<blockquote type="cite" style="padding: 0 0.4em; border-left: #1010ff 2px solid; margin: 0">
<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace">On 6/9/20 1:18 AM, Nyall Dawson wrote:
<blockquote type="cite" style="padding: 0 0.4em; border-left: #1010ff 2px solid; margin: 0">Something else to consider is whether technologies like WMS are<br />ultimately just "dead end" technologies now,</blockquote>
<br />Definitely not agreeing here :-)<br /><br />
<blockquote type="cite" style="padding: 0 0.4em; border-left: #1010ff 2px solid; margin: 0">and possibly we'd be<br />better off focusing on client side rendering of vector features from a<br />server (QGIS or other), and providing a library which can do<br />client-side rendering of vector tiles from QGIS symbology in as close<br />to 1:1 as possible...</blockquote>
<br />For full blown nice reference maps or aerials WM(T)S is still the way<br />to go. For simpler reference maps like Google, vector tiles will be...<br /><br />Building a QGIS rendering engine in a browser, will always be behind (IF<br />it will ever reach the same amount of features).<br /><br />In my view the unique selling point of QGIS Desktop/Server combi is (or<br />should be) the ease to create beautiful maps easily on a desktop and<br />then publish them (including metadata) to a server/service...<br />Just like our commercial brother does with it's services.<br /><br />And mind you: while not perfect WMS/WFS are real standards understood<br />and used by a lot of servers and clients.<br /><br />Vector tiles are great (or at least promising), but I've not seen any<br />client-side cartographic rendering of them yet.<br /><br />Regards,<br /><br />Richard Duivenvoorde<br />_______________________________________________<br />QGIS-Developer mailing list<br /><a href="mailto:QGIS-Developer@lists.osgeo.org">QGIS-Developer@lists.osgeo.org</a><br />List info: <a href="https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer</a><br />Unsubscribe: <a href="https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer</a></div>
</blockquote>
<p><br /></p>
</body></html>