Author: hartmut

Remembering defaults

There have been a few small, but very useful user interface changes recently:

  • When accessing the service for the first time the map will be centered to your current location, when detactable. The old “Bielefeld” default will only be used when location data is not available
  • From there on the map will be centered to the the area you last used for creating a map
  • The layout, style, and overlay you had used in your last request will be remembered and used as default choices, instead of just pre-selecting the first choice.

Umap handling improvements

Umap overlay support hat a slightly bumpy start, so I may have put it on the public server too early, but should now be fully usable in single page mode.

Fixes and improvements applied during the last two days include:

  • rendering doesn’t fail anymore when certain properties are not found
  • per-layer defaults are now taken into account in addition to global ones
  • the “circle” and “ball” markers are now rendered properly
  • whether a marker icon should be black or white is now reliably detected
  • external marker icons referenced by http: or https: URLs are now downloaded and displayed
  • dash patterns are supported when rendering lines
  • the map title field is pre-filled with the Umap map name
  • when the umap file uses a tile layer style supported by this MapOSMatic instance it is auto selected

Things that are still missing or need to be fixed:

  • Umap overlay rendering in multi page format
  • handling of label display options
  • vertical marker positioning may still be minimally too low or high

Still some rough edges left

There are still a few small things not working well on the new machine yet, as due to the failure of the old machine ahead of time.

Problems that I’m aware of right now:

  • WayMarkedTrails overlays were missing most track symbols, and on the way regenerating them I accidentially deleted an important data file. So right now a full re-import of the routes database is ongoing, hopefully finished in a few hours
  • Selecting a geographic area in the web frontend is somewhat broken, I hope to figure out what went wrong with the Javascript code there soon … 
    Rendering by city name is not affected.

Server outage

Unfortunately a bunch of things have gone wrong last weekend, beginning with a failed attempt to renew the LetsEncrypt certificates.

I had already started to set up a new, faster machine anyway, but getting that ready to fully replace the old one didn’t work out that well either yet.

Secondary services, like this blog, are working now, but the web frontend to the MapOSMatic instance is still playing tricks on me, with each page request taking almost exactly 1 minute 52 seconds.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get things running again by tomorrow before leaving for FOSDEM.

PS: there was no data loss, the rendered results for all map requets filed since christmas are still available and can be retrieved if you are patiend enough.