[OpenLayers-Users] Problem displaying OSM coastline shapefiles on Mapnik (Freemap)

[Nick Whitelegg]

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to display sea and coastlines on Freemap using the shapefiles at 
artem.dev.openstreetmap.org. However I'm having no success - it doesn't show 
up (test area = Ventnor, Isle of Wight, UK).

I think it must be something to do with projection as I had similar problems 
trying to get SRTM contours to show up. I tried the exact projection string 
in the current version of osm.xml i.e.
 
<Layer name="coast-poly" status="on" srs="+proj=merc +datum=WGS84 +over">


    <StyleName>coast-poly</StyleName>
        <Datasource>
            <Parameter name="type">shape</Parameter>
            <Parameter 
name="file">/var/www/images/world_boundaries/shoreline_a<
/Parameter>
        </Datasource>
  </Layer>

but had no luck with that.

Then I noticed all my other OSM layers for Freemap had this value instead (not 
sure why, as it says 'latlong'):

<Layer name="coast-poly" status="on" srs="+proj=latlong +ellps=GRS80 
+no_defs">

The OSM coordinates are in mercator projection.

The full XML file is at

http://www.free-map.org.uk/osmmerc.xml

Any ideas what might be wrong here?

Thanks,
Nick