Rendering

I think that’s not even possible, since there are tons of objects that can be tagged, so it’s hard to render them different enough at some point (and we have reached it already IMHO). The only hope are specialized layers that can be switched on and off, to not make a visual mess, but even then somebody would have to design every type of object, so “everything” is not possible - other than in editor as general lines and points.

(not really related to Qanats; apologies for the offtopic diversion)

Well I was being slightly hyperbolic by saying “everything” :slight_smile: but notwithstanding that I think that people sometimes forget a couple of ways of “squeezing more on there”.

Firstly, there’s really no reason why absolutely every type of POI needs a unque icon. I suspect that this varies globally, but locally to me (UK) for many classes of POIs often the POI class is actually pretty obvious from the name - somewhere called “Tantastic” or “Tan Tropez” is probably a tanning salon rather than a hardware store.

Secondly, if you’ve got a map style that supports zoom levels of 19 or above you can actually get a lot of detail in at those zoom levels - you don’t really have the “not enough space” argument there.

No problem, I just made it a separate thread. :slight_smile: Since I’m one of the osm-carto maintainers, I’m interested in rendering.

While I believe we should render as much as it’s possible, since we have more and more useful and popular features in database, it’s just getting harder to add new ones. Of course unique icons/lines/areas/colors are squeezed and the generalizations are used more and more, but it takes time to reach agreement and test if that’s not disturbing other features. I also believe z19 can be used more (also z0-z7 are heavily underused), but even z19 can be crowded for example with underground features, multi-level malls or offices. One has to test a lot to know and find the balance and I try step by step.

There are also things that don’t belong to general map, like railway switches or stork nests and they won’t be rendered anyway, because specialized maps or apps are needed here.