[Tilecache] everyblock use of tilecache & openlayers

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 12:31:05PM -0600, Paul Smith wrote:
> Hi TileCachers,
> 
> I'm the developer at EveryBlock working on maps -- we are indeed using
> the trifecta of Python geospatial imaging: Mapnik + TileCache +
> OpenLayers. 

I'd personally argue against involving Mapnik in there, but my inability
to build it since 0.4.0 is probably negatively affecting my judgement ;)
Regardless, the maps do look very nice: congrats on putting together a
pretty setup.

> And, yeah, we aren't yet post-processing the tiles out of Mapnik --
> definitely on my short list of near-term improvements. For the reasons
> Christopher stated about palette consistency across the entire map,
> I'll probably look to downsampling the tiles on the disk, with optipng
> or pngcrush or similar.

Did you pre-generate most of your tiles, or are you building your cache
on the fly? If the latter, it seems likely that a post-processing step
to modify the tiles could be useful to you: Are you interested in
something like this, if I were to write it? (And more importantly, are
you using 2.x or 1.9? Since I'm unlikely to backport anything I do ...
:))

Congratulations on putting together a slick mapping application: it
would be interesting if you're able to share some feedback on what made
you choose TileCache. I've been getting nagged for TileCache 'Case
Studies' recently, and EveryBlock seems a fine candiate for one, if
you're interested. 

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta