[OSGeo Africa] Making maps pretty

[Adi Eyal]

Hi Tim

Thanks for the email.

>I see you are using d3. What about using a web mapping server rather. There
>are a number of good options out there:

Actually - d3 is not used for mapping at all. It is used for the user
interface. We're using polymaps for the javascript library at the
moment but are planning on moving to openlayers for backwards
compatibility. We're also about to implement a utfgrid layer to allow
for backwards compatible interactivity so that you can hover over a
shape and receive feedback on it.

> - UMN Mapserver - venerable, fast and highly configurable, though lacks any
> point and click tools to do your cartography
> - CartoDB  http://cartodb.com/tour web centric that supports map styling
> with a CSS like syntax
> - QGIS Server - backend based on Quantum GIS that allows you to directly
> publish your maps (QGIS Cloud provides a dead easy way to do that, or you
> can run your own backend instance).
> - GeoServer - very powerful and feature rich with a nice admin interface -
> runs as a java servlet

> Once you are serving your data from a standards based web server,

I don't see a need for a mapping server - we pre-generate all our
tiles into transparent pngs which are then sandwiched between a base
layer without labels and a top layer with labels - I think static
files count as standard-compliant and probably a lot more scalable
than any of systems mentioned above.

> you can start to make it look pretty simply overlaying it with open street map or
> google maps data might be a good start.

yuck. :)

You may notice that we're using the Stamen toner base layer which
lends itself to overlaying data far more than a super-detailed google
map base layer.

Rather than technology choices - I'm more interested in improving the
way that people interact with the maps in order to learn more about
the underlying datasets. Any suggestions on that topic would be
greatly appreciated.

Adi

> Regards

> Tim

-- 
Adi Eyal
Data Specialist
phone: +27 78 014 2469
skype: adieyalcas
linkedin: http://za.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Adi/Eyal