OpenStreetMap
PLEASE FIX THESE MAPNIK BUGS!!
Posted by compdude on 4 January 2011 in English. Last updated on 5 January 2011.It seems that there has not been enough effort to fix bugs in Mapnik. Anyway, I was looking thru the Mapnik bug reports and found a couple bugs that were reported more than a year ago and STILL have not been fixed. Yes, I know that there's never been enough OSM developers, but the fact that there's unfixed bugs reported more than a year ago is just unacceptable. A few bugs I have found were ones that I'm sure many of you have noticed.
*One is the fact that bridge layers aren't rendered correctly for roads other than motorways and motorway_links. This bug report (http://trac.openstreetmap.org/ticket/1931) was created 19 months ago! Its the oldest one I've found regarding this issue, and I'm surprised this issue STILL hasn't been fixed.
*Another bug I've found is the fact that river names aren't displayed for rivers, even though the name was entered in the name=* tag. This bug report (http://trac.openstreetmap.org/ticket/2514) about this issue was opened 13 months ago, and this issue still isn't fixed.
I'm sure there's other rendering bugs that are this old, but these are the ones that I've found are most annoying. So if you have any programming experience, PLEASE lend your efforts to fix these bugs! If you have any spare time, try and fix these bugs. Your efforts will be appreciated
Thanks,
Compdude
PS: PLEASE DO NOT comment saying "fix it yourself!" I don't have any programming experience and if did I wouldn't have created this diary entry in the first place.
Discussion
Comment from iandees on 4 January 2011 at 01:50
Dude, learn how to modify the style files yourself and contribute or shut your trap. Yelling about old bugs is not a way to attract developer attention to your cause.
Comment from Firefishy on 4 January 2011 at 04:22
You will get a lot further by being polite rather than shouting at volunteers.
Comment from skystis on 4 January 2011 at 08:03
Nobody is stopping you to fix it by yourself.
Imagine that after month of hard work you fix them and then some other guy starts to yell at you, that you did not fix another one ;)
Comment from TomH on 4 January 2011 at 09:06
Well that's two bugs I'll be careful never to fix then! Way to go with the attitude problem.
Comment from EdLoach on 4 January 2011 at 10:38
Compdude - I'm fairly sure these issues are being worked on. Perhaps view the video of the State of the Map 2010 presentation here http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SotM_2010_session:_What_I’d_like_to_do_with_Mapnik for more information about the complexities involved.
Comment from emj on 5 January 2011 at 00:11
Thanks Ed for posting the link to what I was thinking about, TomH, Firefishy, iandees: WTF why do you even comment?
About names on rivers, it would be nice with some more examples, and perhaps discussing the rationale behind rendering names on riverbanks instead of waterways..
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=61.69433&lon=16.16713&zoom=16
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.391325&lon=-0.422001&zoom=18&layers=M
Comment from compdude on 5 January 2011 at 04:10
@skystis, and TomH, Come on you guys. Don't you realize not everyone has programming experience? I don't have programming experience! And I wasn't trying to be mean or anything--I'm sorry if you assumed that.
And if I DID have programming experience, I wouldn't have even posted anything here and instead try to fix it myself. DUH!
Comment from av223119 on 5 January 2011 at 22:18
People with programming experience are doing their best. Shouting wouldn't help, really.
Comment from 26eb5473101d742b174d730717409668 on 7 January 2011 at 08:49
Saying "I don't have programming experience" is like saying "I don't know how to cook" and buying junk food. We all started out without programming experience and had to learn. Ok those bugs are a lot more complicated to fix then they look like and are probably not a good thing to learn programming with, but there are qutie a few "easy" bugs a beginner could tackle. And if some beginners did that the experienced people would have more time to work on the nasty bugs.
Comment from Tomash Pilshchik on 10 January 2011 at 16:38
I think you guys are being way too hard on Compdude. The guy is just frustrated. If you had read his message more carefully before replying you would have noticed that:
* There are no comments on these bug reports at all. If they are hard to fix, he has no way of knowing that. It would be reasonable for him to believe that they are trivial issues that have fallen through the cracks.
* He has discussed whether or not he can fix them himself and concluded that he can't. How could he? How long do you think it would take even an expert system administrator and programmer to fix a trivial bug in the Mapnik tiles. Let's see, he would have to:
1) Install Postgres, PostGIS, Mapnik, OSM stylesheets, Apache, etc.
2) Download OSM data and load into database
3) Learn how Mapnik works
4) Study the existing stylesheets to figure out how they work
5) Fix the bug
6) Submit the bug fix to the maintainer of the OSM Mapnik stylesheets
It has taken me more than a year to get to step 4 and I am a professional programmer and system administrator. Do we really expect Compdude to do all this to fix a bug which (as far as he knows) somebody else could fix in five minutes?
Finally, I would like to point out that Compdude is using the skills he does have to contribute regularly to this project. I don't should be quick to look for offense in his words or to conclude that he is trying to exploit us.