How to export in pdf format, to be equivalent of an old fashioned paper map?

Help and support
1

Am I missing something obvious?

I’m using the Share option on the right, the PDF seems really poor quality, and I can’t get it to be better quality using the Scale setting.

The PNG option seems better, but is still pixelated when I zoom in.

Thanks for any advice.

2

There are a variety of ways to create print/printable maps from OpenStreetMap data.

This page is probably a good starting point.

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3

https://print.get-map.org/ is very good.

1 Like
4

Thanks for your replies. I tried out print.get-map.org/ and got an error ( File “/home/maposmatic/ocitysmap/ocitysmap/indexlib/StreetIndex.py”, line 162, in _convert_street_index
linestring[11:-1].split(‘,’))
TypeError: ‘NoneType’ object is not subscriptable)
I sent it to the email mentioned in the error.

Looks like there’s a lot of options available on this page: OSM on Paper - OpenStreetMap Wiki. I’m not sure which would be best for me.

To give more details on what I’d like to do - I don’t need to actually print it, on paper. I just want to create a (large, detailed) pdf file (or whatever format is best). I would then put it on my phone, and scroll through it. The goal is to not be dependent on a specific app, and not need to be online.

Thank you.

5

Maybe you want an SVG file instead? Such map would be infinitely zoomable and would retain all the detail, while being small in size. SVG - OpenStreetMap Wiki may help you. For PDF, many systems have a print to PDF option so as long you get a printable map, you should be able to easily convert it to a PDF.

6

I’ve created maps for print with Mapnik, and creating a SVG is a bad idea. It’s better to create a PNG at a suitable resolution for printing. SVG maps are larger, and large SVGs embedded in PDFs are slower than high resolution images in PDFs and more prone to causing printer crashes.

7

I replied to an op’s new post which added some more context to the problem. Turns out those maps won’t be printed at all.

8

Maybe an alternative:
Organic Maps (Homepage) works offline.

1 Like
9

THANK YOU! Organic maps looks great, I wanted something like that but I just didn’t know what exactly I wanted till I saw it.

Thanks everyone for your help, you’re the best. Really would like to start contributing myself to open source software.

5 Likes
10

I’ve created maps for print with Mapnik, and creating a SVG is a bad idea. It’s better to create a PNG at a suitable resolution for printing.

I agree, particularly for lower zoom levels you end up with very large svgs due to fine detail likely beyond the printing resolution you would want. Printing to an svg and modify it with a vector editing program and raster it afterwards for printing is a suitable workflow though. Generally for a good result it is often advisable to adjust some things like labeling and similar fine tuning