I’ve often wondered why we don’t have a political map version. A lot of boundary mapping could be better displayed than the default map. We could show condominiums, boundary disputes, and other overlapping undefined areas. This would be mostly about the political aspect, we’d probably show some main features such as railways, roads, rivers and cities. But I think it would be unnecessary to show any other POIs.
And then if we like any of the styles, or the way they get rendered then we could port some over to the default map.
The idea of a separate political map also came up in response to requests for color-coding countries:
As noted in the comments on that issue, we now have a dedicated vector tileset for political boundaries as polygons, currently awaiting the first stylesheet or application to use it.
Annotating notable portions of territories, such as condominiums and annexations, would require us to map those areas explicitly. Some border disputes and conflict zones have been mapped as boundary=administrative relations. This isn’t quite correct because that tag is for territories of administrative areas, and we’d probably want to visually distinguish these areas from territories. New boundary=* values would be useful.
That is exactly the reason we need a political map. Most mappers map for the visually appealing over correctness. If we had a map style that supported all the weird map relations that are hard to render on a map, then they could map for the renderer and it would be correct.
One of the design strengths of many political maps is showing only a limited number of objects. When you try to build a map like these in OHM, the results highlight a current weakness with OHM’s “show everything” approach. The maps you shared only show a limited number of rivers, seas, and cities.
Any idea on how to approach the non-color-related issues with building maps like these from OHM?
I wonder if what we need isn’t a layer, but a lightweight editor of some sort. We could lock it down to a few key zoom levels, provide some options for projections, and a limited number of objects to include as a start. Ideally, we could create multiple maps, each with its own url. The could be used on their own, or embedded elsewhere.
Of course, there’d be issues with that, too… how do we ensure the underlying data doesn’t change underneath someone’s very pretty picture?
Or… maybe just a political map layer would be fine?
Looks like OpenStreetMap is not very responsive to the idea of anything other than their default map design. Here at OpenHistoricalMap we love the ideas of different map designs. However there are not enough developers to develop everything we would like to see.
As one person mentioned in the OpenStreetMap forum, there are problems of different countries having different claims over areas making it a sensitive topic. I believe that is the case for OSM, but I think on OHM we could map all claims and have them all show up at the same time. If we developed such a style of course.
I’m working on some ideas around this, as part of figuring out how to easily recreate Wikipedia’s maps using OHM data. Anyone who’s interest, please let me know!
That said, we do already have a pretty good black and white political map layer… as long as you keep it at zoom=1-5…. I present to you… …. The OHM Railway Layer!
It might not be what any of us were hoping for with a political layer, but it does provide an interesting rendering of our data, and is possibly useful for identifying possible coverage holes in a quick & dirty way.
I would also add that working with stylesheets isn’t as difficult as it might seem if you haven’t tried it before. If you’re not too worried about roads and buildings and POIs, etc., and just focused on countries (for now…), that would make things even easier. Let me know if you’re curious!
Okay, I’ll tell you a secret but don’t tell anybody: ever since my parents forced me to sit in on those history classes I can’t… I hate history! Especially the history of their stupid country. oops never mind.
Yes all I’m concerned about is the current situation. In fact I don’t even care about the future.
I don’t care about railroads because I have my own skateboard. So chuck 'em.
So all you need to do is make those boundaries a little thicker, and oh, purple, and allow that to be a transparent overlay, applicable all the other maps, and you’ll be my hero.
…. 