Re: Question about map sources.

[Jiří Techet <techet gmail com>]

On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 5:53 AM, Robert Park <rbpark exolucere ca> wrote:
> On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 6:46 PM, Jiří Techet <techet gmail com> wrote:
>> glad you are back!
>
> Thanks! It's good to be back. Have you tried a recent version of my
> app? I have lots of new features including support for KML and also
> drag&drop! It's been so fun to develop.
>
> https://github.com/robru/gottengeography/wiki/Installation-Instructions

Cool - I've just installed it under Ubuntu using your ppa. You should
add dependency on gir1.2-gconf-2.0 package because it was not
installed by default on my system and your application ended with
exception.

>
>> You're right - libchamplain's URLs for map sources are outdated - I
>> haven't checked them for a while and it seems OpenCycleMap has changed
>> its URL while Osmarender appears to be dead (please let me know if you
>> find it somewhere).
>
> Funny, did a cursory google for osmarender and found the wiki and got
> all excited, then all the links were dead. Oops.

Found this (see the first paragraph):

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tiles@home

>
>> I'll update the URLs for libchamplain factory.
>
> I'm excited to see the next release include the corrected
> OpenCycleMap, I played with your demo and it looks really cool!
>
>> You can always create your own map sources manually and not to rely on
>> the predefined sources in libchamplain. Try the example from the
>> attachment for the OpenCycleMap - similarly you could create all the
>> remaining map sources (see champlain-map-source-factory.c for their
>> definitions).
>
> Are there any other map sources out there not included in the factory?
> Is there any value in me adding opencyclemap manually, since it's just
> a stopgap until you release the fix anyway?

Actually I think it's a good idea to create their own map sources for
any serious application instead of relying on libchamplain's factory.
As you can see, tile sources can appear/disappear/change URL quite
quickly and people will have different versions of libchamplain
installed on their systems, each with a different (possibly outdated)
map sources so your application will work differently on each of the
systems. By creating your own map sources you get independent of a
particular libchamplain version and it is also much more flexible for
you when e.g. the URL of a map source changes.

I'd suggest that Emerillon should create their own map sources too.

Jiri