[mkgmap-dev] [PATCH v2] - styling for the power user

Fri Aug 7 14:17:53 BST 2009

Hi

> "macro/programming language". As you say, the style files were never
> intended to be able to do the things we want them to do now. So what
> can we do about that?

The style system was designed to do the little things that were
hardwired into the code directly from the style itself.  It also
pretty much pre-dated routing so that the fact that you can
have two separate names for a road (say a name and a reference when
both exist) cannot be implemented.

I would like to know what people want to do that is not possible.
Is anyone other than Felix doing something that is difficult with
the current system?

Then I need to work out if the main problem is that actions are, in
effect, run in a random order.  Would guaranteeing that actions were
run in the order that they occurred in the file help?  It would
certainly make it possible to work out what a set of rules did.
I probably shouldn't have allowed stand alone actions on rules without
a type, without also making them ordered.

I think it can be done without a large performance overhead (at least
if you make minimal use of actions), but if it is not going to
help any power stylers then it is not worth doing and we should
do something else instead.

> implement all those nifty new tricks I'd like to have a plug-in
> interface in mkgmap to add my own Java routines. That could be plug-in
> at compile time, no need to make it too complicated. It would be a
> start to sort through all the classes and provide some documented
> hooks to plug-in your own routines. Then in the style files one could
> "invoke" the plug-ins that one would like to use.

I remember thinking that a style could have a classes directory
probably for type resolvers although I forget exactly why.  It
would certainly be possible, although I would like to see if
can make the current system work better for people.

..Steve