[Maposmatic-dev] Mapnik 2.1 released

[David MENTRE]

Hello,

I just discovered it today:
 http://mapnik.org/news/2012/08/24/release-2.1.0/
"""
The Mapnik team is pleased to announce the Mapnik 2.1 release! It was
almost a year in the making and we have tons of new features
including:

    A new framework for Style level image manipulation called Image filters.
    A new pipeline for chained coordinate transformations like
clipping or smoothing called Vertex Converters
    Compositing modes at Symbolizer and (experimental) Style level.
Infinite possibilities from this, see a few examples from AJ.
    Support for Style level opacity
    WKT, WKB, GeoJSON, SVG parsers and generators that can be used
outside of rendering
    Data-driven SVG style transforms on svg markers and images thanks
to @lightmare
    Data-driven orientation for Text, height for Buildings, and
width/height for Markers.
    A new CSV input plugin
    A new GeoJSON input plugin
    A new Python input plugin
    Better text labeling through support for placement-type="list".
See the docs at the bottom of this page.
    Improved Map loading speeds as well as warnings and errors
"""

I hope the "Better text labeling through support for
placement-type="list"." will help us solve long standing bugs.

Further pointers:
  https://github.com/mapnik/mapnik/wiki/TextSymbolizer
"""
List

(Supported starting with Mapnik 2.1) Here a list of styles is defined
and tried one by one till a valid position is found. Each style
inherits from the previous one.

It is defined in XML by:

<TextSymbolizer face-name="DejaVu Sans Book" size="16"
placement="point" dy="8" fill="blue" placement-type="list">[name]
    <Placement size="10" dy="-8" fill="red"/><!-- Reduces text size
and changes offset -->
    <Placement fill="green">[abbreviated_name]</Placement> <!--
size="10", dy="-8", fill="green", shorter text -->
    <Placement fill="orange" dy="8">[nr]</Placement> <!-- size="10",
dy="8", fill="orange", shortest text -->
</TextSymbolizer>

(Note [abbreviated_name] and [nr] have to be supplied by the data source!)
"""

Best regards,
d.