On 08/26/2013 12:13 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 8:11 PM, Tim Alder
<tim.alder(a)s2002.tu-chemnitz.de
<mailto:tim.alder@s2002.tu-chemnitz.de>> wrote:
The ambitious whishlist is there:
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/OSM_Tileserver#Future_Work
Hi,
Just wondering whether there has been much discussion of using a
different style. The "future work" section assumes we'd use the
default OSM style. I've been playing around a lot with TileMill over
the last few months and IMHO:
I think the intention has always been to have the option to use
different styles that are more appropriate for Wikipedia than the
"default OSM" style. However, I think it is important to have a solid
technical infrastructure first to base any such options off of. Although
on the old toolserver tileserver setup, there have been a number of
styles, we never managed to get the performance of that server high
enough to make those styles reliably available. Indeed, if I am not
mistaken, the OSM gadget has now moved back to using the
osm.org tile
infrastructure instead of the one on toolserver, as it wasn't reliable
enough for production. Without the use of the same style as on
osm.org
that wouldn't have been an option.
The production ready infrastructure to be run by WMF is also turning out
to be a longer process than originally expected and so imho the focus
should be to get something reliably up and running first. The less
unknown parts, the quicker this is likely to happen. So concentrating on
replicating the standard tile server infrastructure seems preferable.
Once the reliable infrastructure is in place, the tools to embed this in
Wikipedia and Wikipedia Mobile are solid and it is much better
understood what kind of load Wikipedia generates, I am sure the question
of different styles will come up once again. As you say, there are
likely better styles for Wikipedia's purpose than the default OSM style.
This is also part of the reason why the plans are to have both a
production infrastructure and an infrastructure in labs. The latter
being a place to experiment with things like new styles or new
techniques to present map data (like e.g. vector tiles) that can
eventually be moved into the production system.
Kai
- it's really not hard to make an alternative style
- the default OSM style sort of makes sense as a general purpose
navigational map (show every street name, and pretty much anything
with a name=*), but doesn't make much sense for Wikipedia (which would
mostly be using maps to show a single item in context, rather than
navigation)
- there's probably not much benefit in replicating the default OSM
style (ie, there's no efficiency gained)
- the default OSM style is ugly. :)
Why not a distinctive Wikipedia style, or 2, or 5?
Steve
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