[Carto] Building on Mapnik

[Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)]

Hi all, I've been kicking around and further investigating ways of moving
forward on this project/concept and have come to the personal conclusion
that Mapnik provides a powerful base for building on.  For me there are
several advantages including its Python base and cairo output options (for
supporting various formats, including vectors).  


But also the XML based configuration files also seem relatively
straightforward (easy for me to say ;-) ) and comprehensive enough for this
project.  Of course there will likely be more specs we need to define to
wrap up all our needs, but I think much of what we need is there.  I will do
up a new/revised wiki page to show how I think we can build on this.


Any other pros/cons for using Mapnik as a base?  I figure rather than debate
it for another year, we can focus on something and get issues clearly
defined in that context.


By the way, Dane Springmeyer has built several useful utilities and a cool
plugin for QGIS that allows you to style your layers, etc. and then view the
Mapnik XML definition.  For those who want to check it out see Quantumnik:


http://code.google.com/p/mapnik-utils/ (bitbucket.org seems down at the
moment)


Tyler


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