Stylesheets and rendering

General talk
1

Hello,

I’m new to OSM and I would like to use it to generate a personnal map but I’m quite lost on all the tools available.

My goal is to use OSM’s datas to display “on the fly” a map with a style that I would define.

For the rendering I would like to use Mapnik as it is the main option but I don’t see a lot of diferences beetween other tools.

For stylesheets I have selected Carto but I don’t know if it is good choice for an “on the fly” map.

Do you think I should use other tools? Moreover, do you think it is possible to generate a map with a style without downloading OSM entirely?

Thx for reply!

2

There are thousands of possibilities how you can use raw OSM data to create maps.

I reccomend to start reading the OSM wiki about Rendering, Frameworks, Software etc … type these words in the wiki search box there.

Or concrete hints can also be found at http://help.openstreetmap.org … search for keywords like rendering, map, printing, …

One important factor is the hardware and operating system that you want to use.

Give us more examples what you have tried already and why or why not it is fitting your aims.

3

Thanks for your reply.

I already checked those pages but as you said there are thousands of possibilities and to be honest I’m quite lost and don’t know what to choose beetween one tool or the other one.

I want to develop a website with some tools on the side. This website would content a map of the world with a style (that I want to create) and a user could do some things like selecting his city and put markers on his own map.

The trouble is that I don’t have a lot of space on my server so I would like to generate the map of the world without downloading the whole archive. (I don’t know if it is possible, I didn’t see it during my searches on the wiki)

My server is running on Ubuntu.

I’m currently testing Merkaator and tilemill to see how I can style maps. The trouble is that if I use those tools my maps won’t be able to be updated.

4

After some further researches I plan to use Tilemill to design my map and to export tiles. After that I plan to integrate that tiles with openlayers in order to show it in my web site.

Unfortunately, tiles are quite slow to render (I’m using a I5@3.4Ghz) and I have to download regularly OSM’s datas to generate another time my tiles to kip my map up to date.

I think my system is not optimized but I don’t know what to do to custom and to kip my map up to date.

I am open to any suggestion you might have, thank you!