[HN Gopher] Apache Baremaps: online maps toolkit
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       Apache Baremaps: online maps toolkit
        
       Author : l3x
       Score  : 76 points
       Date   : 2023-05-28 18:53 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (baremaps.apache.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (baremaps.apache.org)
        
       | LeoNatan25 wrote:
       | Just scrolling around Israel, it seems text rendering for RTL is
       | broken.
       | 
       | https://demo.baremaps.com/#12.91/32.06932/34.75969
       | 
       | Should be "tl byb", not "byb lt". How do these issues even exists
       | in 2023? Is a team building these renders not aware of RTL
       | languages, or do they just not bother implementing it?
        
         | tiberious726 wrote:
         | > "How do these issues even exists in 2023?"
         | 
         | Have actually tried writing something that handles languages
         | running in different directions? It might be 2023, but the
         | libraries... aren't great...
        
           | LeoNatan25 wrote:
           | From my experience (not on the web), frameworks that take
           | their Unicode support seriously fare quite well by now
           | (nothing is perfect), while frameworks that make silly
           | assumptions that everything is ASCII do not.
        
         | LeoNatan25 wrote:
         | Opened an issue on GitHub for this:
         | https://github.com/apache/incubator-baremaps/issues/679
        
         | bchapuis wrote:
         | Thank you for reporting this problem, I created an issue on
         | GitHub to track it. The root cause is probably located in our
         | tileset or style (not in the renderer). Right now, we use the
         | OpenStreetMap name attribute in our tiles and most of our tests
         | are performed in central europe.
        
           | LeoNatan25 wrote:
           | Thanks. Just verified, and OSM is correctly rendering RTL (at
           | least Hebrew).
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | makeitdouble wrote:
         | > How do these issues even exists in 2023?
         | 
         | As long as the core developpers of the new platform live and
         | work on the US west coast, any issue non relevant to the US
         | will be a second class citizen, mostly dealt with after the
         | product is deemed stable.
         | 
         | The same way OpenAI operates in english first and other
         | language systems will be improved "later".
         | 
         | It's not a jab on the devs, I realistically can't see any other
         | approach. Just another angle where there's no free lunch and
         | more investment is needed building systems that aren't US first
         | if we care about non-US needs being met in a timely manner.
        
       | abusaidm wrote:
       | This is a great addition to the space. Do you plan to fill the
       | gap left by mapbox for the open source community?
       | 
       | Things like map libs for mobile and the web with advanced things
       | like 3d, navigation, elevation and the likes?
       | 
       | I feel like we need a go to solution that unchains away from the
       | commercial solutions to power osm solutions across devices and
       | use cases.
        
         | bchapuis wrote:
         | Yes, there is clearly a need for a go-to solution. MapLibre and
         | Cesium are doing a great job with their open-source renderers.
         | Baremaps complements this by providing open infrastructure
         | components, such as a data pipeline and a vector tile server.
         | For instance, another missing piece in this space is an open-
         | source IP to location solution. Our current prototype is
         | rudimentary but demonstrates that this gap can be filled.
        
           | pininja wrote:
           | I'm a maintainer for vis.gl (deck.gl and react-map-gl), and
           | am existed you're focusing on infrastructure components. Open
           | data and nav/location solver services are key for many
           | applications, and today most options for what I'd consider
           | "the basics" are proprietary/commercial. I'm all for paying
           | for good work.. but I'd like to see the funds go towards
           | bleeding edge, and see long-established solutions become open
           | and easy to use.
        
             | bchapuis wrote:
             | Clearly, I did some location-based pub/sub research in the
             | past and the lack of open source infrastructure components
             | was an important motivation for Baremaps. Today, the open
             | source ecosystem in this area is moving fast and I think we
             | are pretty close from a having high quality options for all
             | the main infrastructure components (map, geocoder, reverse
             | geocoder, ip to location, routing, TSP, etc.).
        
       | mtrcn wrote:
       | Looks promising, I have published a paper about workflow systems
       | in geospatial data processing
       | (https://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/11/1/20). I wonder if I can use
       | this project to realize proposed system in my paper.
        
         | bchapuis wrote:
         | Nice, thank you for the pointer. Our workflow uses a DAG and
         | the format is loosly inspired by GitHub actions and AWS data
         | pipeline. This is an area we seek to improve, so no not
         | hesitate to reach out on GitHub or by email.
        
       | bchapuis wrote:
       | Hi, author here, I just noticed that Baremaps was submitted to
       | HN. Our demo runs on PostGIS, and I'm surprised it's holding up
       | under the load. I'm happy to answer questions.
       | 
       | Here is the fullscreen demonstration for those who are
       | interested. https://demo.baremaps.com/
        
         | Waterluvian wrote:
         | As a geographer who migrated to mobile robotics and web
         | mapping, I've found that there is a lack of "serious" web
         | spatial analysis tools for in-browser work. Think the
         | geotoolbox you get in ArcGIS or QGIS for building analytical
         | processing pipelines for raster and vector datasets,
         | particularly from web sources.
         | 
         | Lately I've revisited the idea and found that with wasm,
         | SharedArrayBuffer for parallelism, and more maturing libraries,
         | it may be possible to provide a much richer set of analytical
         | tools.
         | 
         | Is this an idea you've explored? This would be my "if I won the
         | lottery, what would I work on?" project.
        
           | bchapuis wrote:
           | Have you tried Turf.js? It goes pretty far when it comes to
           | in-browser spatial analysis. Baremaps is more about the
           | server side of web mapping. We currently use MapLibre for
           | rendering the vector tiles we produce in the browser and plan
           | to support 3d tiles in the future.
        
             | Waterluvian wrote:
             | I should try Turf again. The core problem last time was
             | that it fundamentally does not support "Simple"/ Euclidean
             | coordinate systems. When I want to do analysis on flatland
             | indoor maps, it does all the math wrong.
        
       | jaipilot747 wrote:
       | When would I use Baremaps versus something like GeoServer?
        
         | bchapuis wrote:
         | Hi, author here, Baremaps aims to create an open and easily
         | extensible vector map, inspired by OpenStreetMap Carto. The
         | goal is to provide a high-quality base map for the planet.
         | Since we use PostGIS as a storage backend, you can extend it
         | with your own layers and data.
        
           | Freak_NL wrote:
           | I hope your planning on going _beyond_ what Carto does.
           | Baremaps currently doesn 't render highway=busway either,
           | leading to awkward gaps in the map. It's an accepted tag
           | supported in every renderer _except_ Carto (look at OsmAnd or
           | Organic Maps for instance), because the two or three active
           | maintainers remaining (having lost a number of maintainers in
           | the past two years) don 't like the tag. Carto has pretty
           | much stagnated despite its past achievements.
           | 
           | As the default renderer for openstreetmap.org, Carto is
           | currently an embarrassment for OpenStreetMap.
        
             | bchapuis wrote:
             | Thank you for describing this issue, I created an issue on
             | GitHub to track it. The fact that OpenStreetMap Carto is
             | used in the OpenStreetMap documentation greatly accelerated
             | our styling process (e.g.
             | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_features). That
             | being said, it is a loose port, and I hope we will soon be
             | able to provide other derivatives, such as a positron
             | style.
        
           | placesalt wrote:
           | Are coordinates stored in Web Mercator?
        
             | bchapuis wrote:
             | Yes, as the tiles are created directly from Postgis,
             | reprojecting the coordinates would take too much time.
        
         | ris wrote:
         | Dear lord why would you use GeoServer for anything in 2023
        
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       (page generated 2023-05-28 23:00 UTC)