Rendering styles documentation

[Waldemar Isbrecht]

I was a long time Locus Map and OpenAndroMaps user and I really like the OpenAndroMaps Elevate themes.
I've been using OsmAnd on and off for some time now and while there is no OsmAnd render theme that comes even close to the OpenAndroMaps Elevate theme I always settled for the Touring theme in OsmAnd.

Some things I don't like about the Touring view for hiking (Alpine hiking scale SAC active):
- colors for trail difficulty are way different from what I'm used to.
- trail_visibility is being ignored in Touring view although the default renderer actually processes it.

So I went down the rabbit hole to modify the "Touring-view_(more-contrast-and-details).render.xml" theme with custom additions.

Alas, I didn't find a good and up to date documentation of the render theme syntax.
The only place I found some help is: https://osmand.net/help/docs/Custom_Rendering_How-To.htm
As far as I know the described syntax in that article is outdated.
There's no useful documentation as to how render files are processed.
The first thing I had to find out is how dependency is working. "Touring-view_(more-contrast-and-details).render.xml" is dependent on "default.render.xml".
The Next thing was that both files use different syntax. Some of this is described in the "default.render.xml".
Then I needed to grasp where to add my modifications - I still don't get how to add trail_visibility in touring view.
Then there are all the different attributes. Most of them not documented.

Just try to work out what "pathEffect_5" means? Or pathEffect_0 through pathEffect_5 for that matter.

Sure, with days of spare time I could reverse engineer most of what I need by searching in the source code - and sometimes even this is not enough.

Is there some place with detailed and up to date documentation for the rendering theme files. If not, should I open an issue at the GitHub repo?

I think with better documentation more users could actually contribute to OsmAnd rather than constantly asking for help and changes for some render theme in the GitHub issues.

Proper documentation would empower more users to do the desired changes themselves. I know I would benefit from better documentation and maybe even contribute my changes to OsmAnd.

[Harry van der Wolf]

Unfortunately there is no up-to-date documentation. Over the years the rendering became more complex and the documentation was hardly ever updated.

You are now only talking about the rendering, but also the way the maps are built can reduce or enhance the rendering options.

The most up-to-date information (and I specifically do not say documentation) can be retrieved from the github repository: https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd-resources

Check the renderiing_styles and obf_creation (less important but in case you do decide to create your own maps).

From a usage perspective, which is not rendering as such, but might be helpful as well in some little tweaking, you can take a look Bart Eisenbergs's youtube videos about hiking. They are really very informative.

See https://www.youtube.com/user/barteisenberg.

Also there: the latest ones represent current OsmAnd options best.

Also: From the map menu when selecting "Configure map" (the two "layers" tiles on top of each other), you can add extra overlay or underlay maps. There are a lot of (downloadable) overlay/underlay maps available (no, not OpenAndroMaps Elevate. I just checked).

Maybe one of those might suit your needs.

Harry

Op za 2 jan. 2021 om 17:58 schreef Waldemar Isbrecht <waldemar...@gmail.com>:

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[Bart Eisenberg]

Here's an annotated list of my videos: https://sites.google.com/view/bartetutorials . But yeah, nothing there about custom styles.

[Harry van der Wolf]

It has been quite a while that I really had to look up the translation of a word for which I could not deduct the meaning based on the context in the sentence: a septuagenarian.

Fantastic word.  :)

Harry

[Bart Eisenberg]

I was tempted to hide the aging fact.  Younger friends said I should highlight it. 

[Kevin Kenny]

On Sunday, January 3, 2021 at 9:52:52 AM UTC-8 hvd...@gmail.com wrote:

It has been quite a while that I really had to look up the translation of a word for which I could not deduct the meaning based on the context in the sentence: a septuagenarian.

Fantastic word.  :)

On Sun, Jan 3, 2021 at 1:01 PM Bart Eisenberg <bartei...@gmail.com> wrote:

I was tempted to hide the aging fact.  Younger friends said I should highlight it. 

As a sexagenarian myself, I cheer. (I more and more often hear from younger hikers, "I think it's great that you're still out here at your age." I've gotten over wanting to slap them, and now I take it in the spirit in which it's intended.) 

--

73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin

[Bart Eisenberg]

Heh!  A few years ago, three of us, all 65+, climbed Mt Whitney.  From hikers coming down as they stepped aside:  "Oh come right through, sir."  I felt physically fine.  Mentally old.  But I suppose it's inevitable.  

There's another prejudice that's confronted in declaring my decade (I'm 70):  that old people aren't technically savvy. Our generation came of age in tandem with the Silicon Valley.  At least here in the Bay Area, at least some technical sophistication (if not full-blooded geekdom) among friends is assumed.  

[Harry van der Wolf]

I myself, being 57, within a few days 58,   as the "youngster" in this company, greet you :)

Harry

Op zo 3 jan. 2021 om 22:50 schreef Bart Eisenberg <bartei...@gmail.com>:

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[Waldemar Isbrecht]

Thanks for your responses.
The way I see it there's no way someone without deep - and I mean very deep - knowledge of the inner workings of this app is ever going to be able to contribute.

I mean because Locus uses mapsforge and mapsforge is documented very well, OpenAndroMaps was able to produce one of the best themes for mapsforge apps out there. And Locus did profit from this very much.

The main reason I like Locus and OsmAnd is the offline maps. I don't like online raster maps. But if there's no good render theme that suits my needs, and I'm not able to customize the render theme - because there's no documentation - I'm but left to use Locus until there is a better render theme.

In my opinion render themes are one of the most important things of a maps app.

There's this new blog post on https://osmand.net/blog "2021 New Year resolutions". It mentions many new features but nothing about documentation. That's a shame. I would think that investing in better documentation is worthwhile and time and money well spent.

- Waldemar

[Harry van der Wolf]

In my opinion render themes are one of the most important things of a maps app.

There's this new blog post on https://osmand.net/blog "2021 New Year resolutions". It mentions many new features but nothing about documentation. That's a shame. I would think that investing in better documentation is worthwhile and time and money well spent.

- Waldemar

I fully agree with you. In the period of 2011-2016 I myself added and expanded (technical) documentation. Some of it is still valid, some of it is (completely) outdated but also sometimes never touched again. At that time OsmAnd was really a volunteer project. Now it is a company producing an open source navigation app, but still a company. 

And a company should document their product. 

However, from the other point of view: The site contains quite some informational "howto" documentation on the end-user side for "standard" usage.

Creating additional render xmls is not a standard user activity. 

And especially rendering is a huge task to document if you want to touch all ins and outs. I did create several renderings (and profiles) in the past, and did quite recently a rendering.xml especially for "Stolper Steine". But again: I don't like to document rendering either as that would be a (big) project in itself..

With regard to changing colors (reverse engineering): did you see https://osmand.net/help-online/map-legend ? That might help

Also: Did you set some of the map details like "extra details", or the two for the roads?

Maybe it might indeed be good to register this lack of rendering documentation as an issue. 

Also: You could try to contact Eugene Zmeuk and Sonora (nickname) who are the main contributors to the website. Eugene more on the general stuff and Sonora (Hardy) more on the technical aspects. (Sonora (Hardy) created the Touring view rendering style.)

Harry