[Carto] Building on Mapnik

[Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)]

Seems like months ago since I talked about this.. oh, it WAS months ago :)

For those of you who may be new, most of our ideas have been captured
(some refined, some raw) here:

http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Cartographic_Library

I'm considering trying to see if we can get a summer of code project
approved this year but coupling it to Mapnik or QuantumGIS in
particular.  That is, unless some other project sees the benefit and
would like to work with me to write up the soc proposed idea on this one
again.

Last year, some of the other mentors didn't thought we should not start
'new' projects - e.g. a collaborative approach to the "cartography
engine" idea.  So instead, by coupling to an existing project, there
should be less concern.  But I was in a rush last year ;-)  Now we can
do it properly.

See first couple sections here for a summary/workplan:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Cartographic_Library

Interested?

Tyler

> On Oct 2, 2009, at 12:42 PM, Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
> 
>> 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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