Hacks

Various software can style maps and generate a proper SLD document for OGC compliant WMS like GeoServer to use. However, in most occasions, the styling allowed by the graphical tools is pretty limited and not good enough to achieve good looking, readable and efficient cartographic output.

The presentation aims to provide the attendees with enough information to master SLD documents allowing him to produce amazingly looking maps on his own. SLD will no longer be cartographer's enemy.

Topics that will be covered are as follows:

• making scales that show different data at different scales, and that change its cartographic rendering as well, by means of multi scale rules
• using GeoServer extensions to build common hatch patterns and how to control the patterns appears using advanced stroke control over the basic marks
• line styling beyond the basics, such as cased lines, repeating symbols and hatch patterns
• leveraging TTF symbol fonts and SVGs to generate good looking point thematic maps, line and fill patterns
• use the full power of GeoServer label lay-outing tools to build pleasant, informative maps on both point, polygon and line layers, including adding road plates to your map
• leverage the labelling subsystem conflict resolution engine to avoid overlaps in stand alone point symbology
• blending charts into a map
• dynamically transform data during rendering to get more explicative maps without the need to pre-process a large amount of views, such as on the fly extraction of contours, range polygons and wind maps from raster data
• perform cross layer filtering and parametrize it to generate a generic “paint all points of interest close to the main road” style in which the client can dynamically change the distance.

For years, Mapnik has been the cartographic tool of choice for web designers. Sometimes however a web map requires more than rendered tiles. It requires the power of a complete geospatial service. Wouldn't it be nice to bring Mapnik's design prowess into GeoServer's full-featured, batteries-included management interface and standards-compliant services? Now you can!

In this talk we introduce mapnik2geotools -- a configuration importer from Mapnik to GeoServer. We will sample renderings from Open.Mapquest.com Mapnik styles and data from OpenStreetMap, compare the quality and styling options of Mapnik and GeoServer's rendering engines, and discuss future directions for the toolkit.