Creating simple off-line local map

I’m trying to produce a simple map of a cycle route on rural roads for a printed route leaflet for a local community group.
The map area will be about 15 miles square.

Ideally I would show all roads (regardless of class) as two thin black lines, and add colour along the cycle route. Minimal detail to show built up areas would be useful but not essential.
I don’t know how I could do that so I’ve done some work on svg images using Inkscape (mainly to edit the properties of the roads to make the route stand out) but this has many drawbacks. The resulting map is cluttered and the pale colours used for road outlines don’t print well.

Any suggestions as to the best way to approach this project would be appreciated.

have a look at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_on_Paper

and tell us what program comes near your aims. Maybe we can give more hints then to finetune your printings.

Thanks, I hadn’t found that page. Looks promising.

I’m getting nowhere fast with this! :confused:
I would like to be able to produce maps in a style similar to the map of Weybridge shown on the OSM_on_Paper web page. i.e. simple outline maps showing roads and other main features, that can be customised (I want to generate maps showing suggested cycle tours on country roads). The output needs to be printable.
I’m doing this on a Windows 7 PC.
I’ve read carefully the OSM_on_Paper web page and, from this it seems to me that Osmarender is probably the way I should go - but I would appreciate any advice on this.
I’ve studied the HowTo guide on the Osmarender page. I’ve set up a folder in which to create maps. I’ve copied the osm-map-features-z17.xml and osm-POI-features-z17.xml files to my maps folder. I’ve downloaded the OSM data for the area and saved this as data.osm. From the Osmarender process chart, I see that I now need to render it with one of the suggested packages. As I’m a windows user I tried MSXML. Although I have downloaded this (MSXML6.msi which installed msxsl.exe which I’ve copied to the windows/system32 directory).
Using the command prompt, I’ve navigated to the directory containing the mapping data and typed the following:
msxsl data.osm osm-map-features-z17.xml
In response I am getting a message "Error occurred while compiling stylesheet ‘osm-features-z17.xml’ Code 0x80004005 Required attribute ‘{http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform}version’ is missing.

Is this the right way to go? If not, what is?

What I do if I want a custom map to print out is, first use JOSM to download and save the area I wish to use then import that into Maperitive to render it. I found that Maperitive took a bit of getting used to but you can totally customise how things are rendered (or not rendered) and save the resulting rendering rules to use again. Maperitive will output to PNG or SVG.

Using Maperitive and applying the GoogleMaps rendering rules produces a suitable map at about zoom level 14 (i.e. all roads shown by two lines), but if I export to SVG (for Inkscape) I can only get that area that is currently visible in the Maperitive window. Also, when I open the SVG file in Inkscape, I can’t manipulate individual components; I would need to change the fill colour on roads that I want to show as part of a cycle route. Any suggestions out there?

It’s a while since I did this but IIRC, I did all the editing in JOSM first, - being carefull not to upload the results to OSM :slight_smile: - . For instance, make your cycle route a highway type not used in the rest of the map (make up your own type?) and then use Maperitive’s rendering rules to colour that route the colour you want.

Thanks, Richard, I’m making some progress at last! But with progress comes more problems…
Using JOSM, I can only view the map in wireframe which makes it difficult to recognise features. The JOSM help pages suggest that you can view a rendered version, but how?

I want to create a new highway type, ‘cycletour’. I guess I need to do two things (1) add the definition of ‘cycletour’ to the mrules file (done, but possibly not correctly) (2) in JOSM, select a road and change its type to ‘cycletour’. I’ve done this but when I then try and render the map, that road is missing, as the new definition is being ignored. Any idea why?

If you use the Bing imagery that will help you see features.

You will need to edit the rules to add a highway type=cycletour which you can then specify colour etc.

Any idea where I can find information on how to add a new type to the rules? Can’t find anything so far in the OSM help pages. Have also tried to work out the syntax from other types but obviously got it wrong!

Did you try clicking on “Help” ?

There’s an article here http://www.britishideas.com/2011/01/16/so-you-want-to-be-a-cartographer/ that helped me get started.

Yes, tried ‘Help’ but didn’t find anything helpful! I think that was because (a) Key and Value are freeform text so there is no explanation of how to create new ones, and (b) I eventually realised that mrules are a feature of Maperitive and not of the OSM! :confused:

Thanks for the britishideas web site link, that is a very useful article and has got me quite a bit further.

Now reading the Maperitive manual section on rulesets… slowly getting there! :slight_smile: Thanks for your help.