New version of MapOSMatic, an OpenStreetMap-based service to render city maps

In September 2009, we launched MapOSMatic (http://www.maposmatic.org),
a free web service that allows to render city maps on-demand based on
OpenStreetMap data. Those city maps, divided into squares, are
associated with a street index, making the process of locating a street
on the map easier.

We are proud to announce today the launch of a new version of
MapOSMatic, which is the result of significant development
efforts. Amongst the new features:

 * The rendering of poster maps is now done on large standard paper
   formats (A3, A2, A1, etc.), automatically chosen depending on the
   geographical size of the city, instead of arbitrarily-sized papers
   that were hard to print. The end result is close to commercial
   folded maps;

 * The ability to render multi-page maps, where the map and street
   index are split into several pages, for easier printing on regular
   paper formats (A5, A4, US Letter). Those multi-page maps are
   similar to commercial city booklets;

 * The availability of several rendering styles. For now, we provide
   the standard OpenStreetMap.org style, several styles provided by
   MapQuest, and a custom style more suitable for printing. In the
   future, we expect to extend those styles, or even to let users
   provide their own styles. Do not hesitate to contact us about
   custom styles;

 * Improvements in the selection of cities: in the previous versions,
   we were limited to OpenStreetMap areas of a certain administrative
   level;

 * And many, many other smaller features and improvements: quality of
   the renderings, better user interface to render maps, last OSM
   database update date printed on the map, etc.

MapOSMatic is completely free software, distributed under the terms of
the Affero General Public License v3. The project is available through
Git repositories, has a mailing-list and an IRC channel. For details,
see our About page (http://www.maposmatic.org/about), our wiki
(http://wiki.maposmatic.org) and the Savannah project page
(http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/maposmatic/).

In addition to the launch of this new version, we are also starting a
donation campaign. The project is completely developed and maintained
by volunteers, but we need funding to cover hardware costs and
transportations costs to organize the developer meetings during which
MapOSMatic improvements are implemented (see our blog at
http://news.maposmatic.org). If you appreciate MapOSMatic, do not
hesitate to help us by donating with PayPal on
http://www.maposmatic.org/donate.


-- 
Thomas Petazzoni                http://thomas.enix.org
MapOSMatic                      http://www.maposmatic.org
Logiciels Libres à Toulouse     http://www.toulibre.org
Embedded Linux                  http://www.free-electrons.com