OpenGeofiction
I recently encountered a small problem while mapping.
When I was mapping the “regions” (an administrative division, comparable perhaps to a German Bundesstaat) in Abrilleron, I originally used admin_level = 4 in their relations. However, because Abrilleron is quite small, this turned out to be a bad idea. Because they show up starting at zoom level 4, where Abrilleron is less than 10x10 px, the region boundaries dominated the look of the nation. Now I have tried to use admin_level = 5 instead. Here I have the opposite problem. Now the borders don’t show up until zoom level 11. But at that point all regions are already so big that the name isn’t displayed anymore.
This is how Abrilleron looks at zoom 10 now.
For comparison, the most developed part at zoom level 11.
Do you have any ideas how I can work around this? Split regions into smaller sections? Remove them from the map? Something else entirely?
Discussion
Comment from Luciano on 18 May 2016 at 01:30
This is a problem in OSM, too. There are two ways to try to deal with it.
1) Find some area where the map (either OSM or OGF) looks the way you want your area to look, and imitate the tagging from that area of the map (by examining the area’s tagging practices). This is, broadly speaking, “tagging to the render.” I have done this in Mahhal, where I made my prefectures “states” (admin_level=4) and my kingdoms “countries” (admin_level=3) mostly because I was trying to control how they rendered.
2) Tag to the political reality as you conceptualize it, and let the render “catch up” with style updates, in the future. Meanwhile, you can rely on alternative non-standard layers (I use the Histor Style layer a lot in the Ardisphere, because the standard style doesn’t show the political divisions very well at various zooms).
Comment from _zM on 18 May 2016 at 04:36
Thanks Luciano. I’m going to tag the smaller administrative divisions first and then I’ll decide what looks best.