This project is yet another attempt at a custom highway shield rendering, suitable for US-style maps, for OpenStreetMap.
This project is largely derived from an earlier effort led by Phil! Gold. It attempts to layer atop a completely standard import of OpenStreetMap data resulting from a run of osm2pgsql, and to work with an unmodified Mapnik. These constraints are relatively severe. They imply that that nothing can modify the 'slim tables' and import tables even to the extent of creating foreign key constraints that refer to them (doing so causes deadlocks when running osm2pgsql to update the database). Moreover, they imply that code executed at rendering time (that is, in response to a database query from Mapnik) cannot modify the database in any way, because Mapnik has a read-only connection. Rendering queries therefore may not use temporary tables, much less cache results in the database. (This restriction rules out the technique that the earlier project used for creating shield clusters.)
As a prerequisite, the user is expected to have a PostgreSQL database already set up, with 'slim' tables available. The workflow described at the 'switch2osm' web site is fairly typical of what is required. Most people who develop any sort of rendering chain based on OpenStreetMap have already performed the necessary steps.
Several of the main scripts that maintain the project's database information are written in the Tcl programming language, and therefore its interpreter and PostgreSQL interface must also be present on the target system. On a Debian-based system such as Ubuntu, they may be installed with
sudo apt-get install tcl8.6 tcl8.6-tdbc tcl8.6-tdbc-postgresIn addition, Inkscape is required to process SVG files, and ImageMagick is required in some cases to compose graphics that comprise multiple signs. It is believed that the following command should suffice on Debian systems:
sudo apt-get install imagemagick inkscapeInkscape, in turn, will require the Roadgeek 2005 fonts in order to render the highway signs. They can be found in the Github release system for the roadgeek-fonts project.
Users of other operating systems should consult the local system's package manager for where to find the required third-party software.
The file, config.tcl must be edited to reflect the local installation. The comments in the file should be self-explanatory. Note that the path to the PNG images, pngDir, must be accessible to the Mapnik instance at rendering time, since that is where the renderer will obtain the shield graphics.
Once the configuration is done, the system may be set up by typing,
./make-routetables.tcl --initThis command will initialize all the database tables required for shield rendering at run time, deleting any existing content. (See Database Tables below for an overview of the tables.) Leaving off the --init flag will reinitialize the tables describing route relations, but leave any precomputed shield graphics intact.
Once there are tables describing the routes, then the shield graphics corresponding to the routes have to be created so that the tile renderer can find them. This can be done with
./routeGraphics.tclOn the initial run, this might take an hour or two to pass through the thousands of entries in the database and generate the graphics. On subsequent runs, it should be quite fast, no more than a few minutes, because most graphics will already be in place.
Expect that there will be a cascade of messages to the standard error about networks not being found or references not matching their networks. Some of these messages are caused by networks for which properly formatted graphics are not yet available, while others are simply typos in the OpenStreetMap data. At the end of the run, the networks that could not be recognized are listed, with the ones having the most associated routes being listed first.
Once this is done, the database should be set up and ready to go for rendering.
The installation will create several stored procedures in the database to aid in identifying where to place highway shields. These procedures will return ways and multiple columns containing the file names where corresponding graphics are to be found, suitable for use with a GroupSymbolizer in Mapnik.
A suitable style for placing shield custers in Mapnik XML might be:
<Style name="road-shield">
<Rule>
<GroupSymbolizer start-column="1" num-columns="8"
placement="line" spacing="200"
clip="false">
<PairLayout/>
<GroupRule>
<Filter>[picture_%] != ''</Filter>
<ShieldSymbolizer file="[picture_%]"
fontset-name="book-fonts" size="10" fill="white"
>' '</ShieldSymbolizer>
</GroupRule>
</GroupSymbolizer>
</Rule>
</Style>(The procedures are set up to return eight columns because this is the maximum number of concurrent signed routes that has yet been observed. The count is easily changed, since internally there is no hard limit.)
This style would then be driven from a layer whose definition might look like:
<Layer name="road-shields-16-up"
status="on"
srs="+proj=merc +a=6378137 +b=6378137 +lat_ts=0.0 +lon_0=0.0 +x_0=0.0 +y_0=0 +units=m +k=1.0 +no_defs"
maximum-scale-denominator="12500" >
<StyleName>road-shield</StyleName>
<Datasource>
<Parameter name="type">postgis</Parameter>
<Parameter name="dbname">gis</Parameter>
<Parameter name="estimate_extent">false</Parameter>
<Parameter name="extent">
-9462156.716111112, 3895303.962851664,
-7347086.391333333, 6106854.83403499
</Parameter>
<Parameter name="srid">3857</Parameter>
<Parameter name="geometry_field">way</Parameter>
<Parameter name="geometry_table">planet_osm_line</Parameter>
<Parameter name="table">
(SELECT way, id, picture_1, picture_2, picture_3, picture_4,
picture_5, picture_6, picture_7, picture_8
FROM planet_osm_query_shields_line_all(!bbox!,28))
AS pictures
</Parameter>
</Datasource>
</Layer>Here, most of the Parameter objects are just the usual mess required for database connectivity and geographic projection. Only the table parameter is any different from any other PostGIS layer. In it, a stored procedure is called to calculate route concurrences and return a set of ways (with mapping to sets of graphics) for routes in the current bounding box. Multiple procedures are provided:
-
PREFIX_query_shields_line_all
Returns all signed, numbered routes in the PREFIX_line table. This is suitable only for the highest zoom levels.
-
PREFIX_query_shields_road_all
Returns all signed, numbered routes in the PREFIX_road table. This is suitable for medium zoom levels; the road table attempts to filter out the least significant highways.
-
PREFIX_query_shields_road_major
Returns all signed, numbered routes in the PREFIX_road table that are labeled highway=primary, highway=trunk, or highway=motorway. This is suitable for zoom levels out to views a few hundred kilometres across
-
PREFIX_query_shields_road_motorway
Returns shield clusters only for motorways. This would be a suitable procedure for rendering at the scale of an entire country.
At present, the workflow is set up to update the tables describing routes all at once as a batch, by rerunning make-routetables.tcl without the --init option. Since this, and a rerun of routeGraphics.tcl, take only a few minutes, this can easily be slotted in after a daily run of a tool such as osmosis. This workflow is reasonably well suited for users who, for example, run from extracts posted at GeoFabrik.
Obviously, this process will not scale to a server that is processing minutely updates of the entire planet. Incremental update of the tables is, of course, possible. In fact, the developer of the current tables attempted to automate incremental updates based on SQL triggers on the PREFIX_rels and PREFIX_ways tables. This attempt proved to be unsuccessful because of the way that osm2pgsql locks the database. The first attempt by osm2pgsql to delete a relation deadlocked with itself.
There are only a few tables needed to support shield clusters. They record the location of graphics in the file system, and provide the information needed to find out what shields are associated with a relation
The PREFIX_shieldroute table has a row for each route relation that might have a highway shield (hence excluding bus and rail routes, but including things like hiking and snowmobile routes so that they can be labeled with OSMC:symbol later).
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| relid | OSM ID of the route relation |
| route | route=* value, such as 'road', 'hiking', 'snowmobile' |
| network | network=* value, such as US:I |
| ref | ref=* value |
The PREFIX_shieldway table has a row for each way that is a member of a route relation that might have a highway shield.
Column | Meaning -------+---------- relid | OSM ID of the route relation idx | Position of the way among the member ways of the route relation wayid | OSM ID of the member way role | Role of the member way in the relation
A foreign key constraint makes sure that 'relid' of the member pairs with 'relid' of the relation.
This table is not named with the import prefix, because it may be shared among imports of several regions. It keeps track of the generated graphics for highway shields
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| id | Arbitrary integer to serve as a primary key |
| route | Type of route ('road', 'hiking', etc.) being represented |
| network | Network (e.g. US:I) being represented. |
| ref | Reference being represented |
| size | Nominal size of the graphic in pixels. |
| filename | Path name in the file system where the grapnic may be found. |
The stored procedures discussed in the previous section function by joining one of the line tables (PREFIX_roads or PREFIX_ways) to PREFIX_shieldway, then to PREFIX_shieldroute and finally to osm_shield_graphics. This join may well yield multiple results. The first eight non-NULL ones are used for labeling. (Ordinarily, there will only be one or two.)