[Qgis-user] International/Local Labeled World Basemap in QGIS. Protomaps?

[Greg Troxel]

Richard Duivenvoorde via QGIS-User <qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org> writes:

> Looking at Protomaps [0], and see that it's tools are OpenSource, data
> from OSM data, and you should be able to host a 110Gb file via CDN as
> basemap.

I have been hearing about this and due to excitement inertia I am still
in the stage of finding it sort of interesting.

I am not sure how I feel about "range requests are the right answer" vs
tiles, as from a CS viewpoint it seems to be the same thing and it feels
a little like "you have to do it our way now", and it's not clear to me
that there is a layer that basically extracts tiles from the big file,
separating the tiles/range issue from the rest.  I hope it is that way.
I can see that currently people can host a big file with ranges more
easily than a hierarchy of files.

My impression is that there is js for browsers to obtain the bits via
range requests and then render.  Is there a plugin that will effectively
fetch the tiles from this alternate (non-TMS, non-OGC) representation?
And then render?  Or is your idea to obtain vector data, and have a
separate qgis-specific rendering pipeline?

Saying "host a 110 Gb" file leads to the obvious question of update
rate, but monthly updates would be decent for many uses.

> Would it be an idea (doable) for us as QGIS Community to host/CDN
> this, make sure we can handle a couple of styles/themes very well and
> then add it to QGIS as base map ( EPSG:3857 only sorry :-) )?
>
> OR would 'we' prefer to have vector tiles in 'proper' crs's?

Generally tiles are available in 3857, so that seems ok.

But this is vector.  Are you suggesting that this be geodetic in
ITF2014, instead of projected?

If so, are you trying to resolve:

  3857 is icky from a theoretical perspective, the earth not being
  spherical?

  you don't want projected coordinates?

  WGS84 as referenced by 3857 is an ensemble, and some members are 2m
  different, and therefore anything in 3857 is low accuracy unless you
  have a secret side agreement?

> Myself I'm looking for a proper WORLD-map with both English and Local
> labels/placenames (or easy switchable between those).
> And even downloading a 100Gb file and installing locally would be OK
> for me.
>
> Others maybe had a look or better idea's?

It seems like nice functionality to have, even if the hosting doesn't
happen.


I wonder how this compares to loading OSM in postgis and styling it.
It would be nice to have consistent methods so that one can mix and
match the various architectural (vs GIS) layers in the stack without
them being siloed.