January archive
OS Mastermap
January 29, 2006
I just stumbled on Ed Parson's blog entry "When is a map not a map.. when it's Mastermap", and I cannot agree more with both responders: Alan Doyle and Tom Steinberg. Why would one want to hack a teeny-weeny piece of Basingstoke or Port Talbot? Anyway, I figured out that I can use it to show off some of mapnik's styling capabilities. I downloaded the sample and followed OSMM _House style_(not quite, I got a bit lazy to specify all styles needed) and here it is:
Release 0.2.4a
January 2, 2006
About:
Mapnik is a toolkit for developing GIS applications. At the core is a C++ shared library providing algorithms/patterns for spatial data access and visualization. A key project goal is to provide the best possible high-quality cartographic output whithout compromising performance. Mapnik is fast and easy to integrate with other frameworks. If you like coding in Python, there are boost.python bindings and you can start developing web-mapping applications with your favourite framework right away (just consider using django :).
Changes:
This release adds serialization support for map definition objects (Text,XML,binary), alpha blending for symbols, some performance and portability improvements. Several bugs/features were corrected, including the bug in the shape datasource that prevented attributes being read for point/pointz/pointm geometries.
Future directions:
As always, there are lots of things in the pipeline. Mapnik is almost ready to run on win32 and mac. In the next few days I'll be adding support for pattern lines, fills, gradients etc. I've also started long overdue work on text rendering. Stay tuned!
The screenshots below show a simple Qt4 application which will eventually make its way into mapnik's source tree. It is a good example of how to add mapping capability to existing GUI frameworks. It really takes an afternoon to code a GIS viewer with Mapnik C++.
