[Xastir] OSM maps: .geo files, local rendering?

[Andrew Errington]

On Thu, April 14, 2011 09:02, Jason KG4WSV wrote:
> Can someone suggest a method (or give me an RTFM reference) for
> generating .geo files for OSM map server tiles?  I like the looks of
> tangoGPS, and am exploring the use of one map tile set for both tango and
> xastir (or more likely just using a tagoGPS map cache for an xastir map
> base, since there's a fairly well defined tile interface).

That's a good idea.  I think it has been mentioned before, but I don't
know how it was phrased, so I don't know the best terms to use for an
accurate Google search.

> I was also wondering if anyone has looked at installing a local map
> rendering engine (e.g. mapnik) so that OSM maps can be used in an offline
> mode?  I took a brief look on one of my systems (ubuntu, IIRC, could have
> been CentOS), but it seemed like an all too typical linux dependency death
> spiral, so I gave up fairly quickly.  If you've set one of these up, do
> you have suggestions on which distro, a good howto, etc?
>
> I'm liking the looks of these OSM style maps, but if I can't have my
> maps in an offline mode they're useless to me.

Xastir has a built-in vector renderer.  You could download the OSM source
data and use it directly.  Here's a starting point, but I haven't looked
for anything more recent:

http://blogs.sun.com/magne/entry/a_first_cut_at_using

Also, take a look at Navit.  It's a GPS mapping/navigator program.  They
have tools for extracting  chunks of data from OSM, maybe you could get
Xastir to play nice with their data format.

73,

Andrew
ZL3AME