Townguide - progress at last!

You can't beat some really bad weather to help make progress with my nerdy jobs.
I have got Waldemar's django front end to townguide working (http://dtownguide.webhop.net), and have managed to make a few changes, including adding fancy tab things to the main map selection form.
There are still a few things to sort out:

• The area selection on the map does not align properly with the mouse pointer - not sure why - must be something to do with OpenLayers projections...
• Mapnik re-sizes the output map to match the bounding box, so townguide needs to check the actual map size to make sure the grid squares are right.
• There is something funny about the output resolution - need to see what it is using - the output looks much higher resolution than I asked for, so I suspect there is a sum wrong somewhere!
• Add the GPX track and waypoint plugins (they are just templates at the moment).
• Add an option to suppress un-named ways - the 'None' in the street index can confuse people.
• Reinstate other output formats - only 'poster' is working.

Townguide - progress at last!

You can't beat some really bad weather to help make progress with my nerdy jobs.
I have got Waldemar's django front end to townguide working (http://dtownguide.webhop.net), and have managed to make a few changes, including adding fancy tab things to the main map selection form.
There are still a few things to sort out:

• The area selection on the map does not align properly with the mouse pointer - not sure why - must be something to do with OpenLayers projections...
• Mapnik re-sizes the output map to match the bounding box, so townguide needs to check the actual map size to make sure the grid squares are right.
• There is something funny about the output resolution - need to see what it is using - the output looks much higher resolution than I asked for, so I suspect there is a sum wrong somewhere!
• Add the GPX track and waypoint plugins (they are just templates at the moment).
• Add an option to suppress un-named ways - the 'None' in the street index can confuse people.
• Reinstate other output formats - only 'poster' is working.

Townguide - where next?

My townguide map rendering application is about a year old now, but hasn't changed much since last winter.
Waldemar did a lot of work on it for his Google Summer of Code project where he re-hashed the townguide renderer code to make it more modular and produced a django based web front end.
I have not done very well getting this working because I do not understand django well enough to sort out a few minor bugs in it.
Instead I have taken his re-hashed renderer code and developed it further to make it even more modular - as well as 'plugins' for different PDF output formats, there are plugins for the base map and for different map overlays (a grid, custom markers, gpx tracks etc.) [well nearly anyway].  It also uses mapnik2 so can now produce nice high resolution output to make it comparable to the much prettier maposmatic output.

I have been reading a book about django for a few days now (Python Web Development with Django by Forcier, Bissex and Chun) and feel that I should be able to understand both Waldemar's code and the maposmatic version, so I will have a go at the web front end now - there seems little point in developing my clanky php version with these two much slicker front ends available.

Townguide - where next?

My townguide map rendering application is about a year old now, but hasn't changed much since last winter.
Waldemar did a lot of work on it for his Google Summer of Code project where he re-hashed the townguide renderer code to make it more modular and produced a django based web front end.
I have not done very well getting this working because I do not understand django well enough to sort out a few minor bugs in it.
Instead I have taken his re-hashed renderer code and developed it further to make it even more modular - as well as 'plugins' for different PDF output formats, there are plugins for the base map and for different map overlays (a grid, custom markers, gpx tracks etc.) [well nearly anyway].  It also uses mapnik2 so can now produce nice high resolution output to make it comparable to the much prettier maposmatic output.

I have been reading a book about django for a few days now (Python Web Development with Django by Forcier, Bissex and Chun) and feel that I should be able to understand both Waldemar's code and the maposmatic version, so I will have a go at the web front end now - there seems little point in developing my clanky php version with these two much slicker front ends available.

Townguide Web Service Working

Well, I think the townguide web service is working now (http://www.townguide.webhop.net).
There is a simple queue so it only renders one job at a time, and you can view the progress of your job through the queue.
The source code and early documentation is stored at http://code.google.com/p/townguide.
The main thing to fix now is the output resolution - if I increase the resolution (in dpi) of the output map too far, mapnik changes zoom level and reduces the size of the text, so it is no easier to read - I need to understand mapnik style sheets now....

Townguide Web Service Working

Well, I think the townguide web service is working now (http://www.townguide.webhop.net).
There is a simple queue so it only renders one job at a time, and you can view the progress of your job through the queue.
The source code and early documentation is stored at http://code.google.com/p/townguide.
The main thing to fix now is the output resolution - if I increase the resolution (in dpi) of the output map too far, mapnik changes zoom level and reduces the size of the text, so it is no easier to read - I need to understand mapnik style sheets now....

Town Guide Progress

The good thing about so much bad weather over Christmas was that I could do some nerdy work rather than going out walking or cycling.....
The town guide Python project has therefore made good progress. The program can now generate a PDF 'poster' that can include a street index, and labelled features from the map database (pubs, shops, tourist attractions etc.). A typical example is shown at http://www.townguide.webhop.net/example1_hartlepool.pdf.

I have set up a very rudimentary web service using a PHP script to call townguide.py to generate a town guide on demand at http://www.townguide.webhop.net. It is running on a very small computer, and there is no queue, so there is no saying what will happen if more than one person tries to use it at once - that is another job!

Town Guide Progress

The good thing about so much bad weather over Christmas was that I could do some nerdy work rather than going out walking or cycling.....
The town guide Python project has therefore made good progress. The program can now generate a PDF 'poster' that can include a street index, and labelled features from the map database (pubs, shops, tourist attractions etc.). A typical example is shown at http://www.townguide.webhop.net/example1_hartlepool.pdf.

I have set up a very rudimentary web service using a PHP script to call townguide.py to generate a town guide on demand at http://www.townguide.webhop.net. It is running on a very small computer, and there is no queue, so there is no saying what will happen if more than one person tries to use it at once - that is another job!

Town Guide (again)

Progress with the Town Guide program stalled a bit when I went on holiday, then was rather busy at work for a while. I am back to thinking about it now.
The current version has two output modes, HTML and PDF - both are quite crude, but work.
The PDF output uses LaTeX, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but I am struggling because LaTeX thinks it knows better than me what the output is supposed to look like - it keeps putting the tables etc. at the end, rather than where I ask for them.
This means I have two options - either do battle with LaTeX to sort it out, or abandon it and go for a more 'direct' PDF production.
I think that as the output I am producing is short and simple, I may as well go for 'direct' production. I am going to have a try with ReportLab's python library (http://www.reportlab.org/oss/rl-toolkit/guide/).
I'll go and read the instructions and see how it goes....

Town Guide (again)

Progress with the Town Guide program stalled a bit when I went on holiday, then was rather busy at work for a while. I am back to thinking about it now.
The current version has two output modes, HTML and PDF - both are quite crude, but work.
The PDF output uses LaTeX, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but I am struggling because LaTeX thinks it knows better than me what the output is supposed to look like - it keeps putting the tables etc. at the end, rather than where I ask for them.
This means I have two options - either do battle with LaTeX to sort it out, or abandon it and go for a more 'direct' PDF production.
I think that as the output I am producing is short and simple, I may as well go for 'direct' production. I am going to have a try with ReportLab's python library (http://www.reportlab.org/oss/rl-toolkit/guide/).
I'll go and read the instructions and see how it goes....