New Maperitive Beta Release

DOWNLOAD LINK: http://maperitive.net/beta/Maperitive-1.1.2001.zip

A new release of Maperitive (branded as build 2001) is finally here - albeit in beta form. I wanted to release the new stuff I was working on since May, but I didn’t want to wait for everything to be totally finished. But let’s start with some…

Notes about this release you should be aware of

NOTE 1: This beta release will not appear as an update when running the “standard” Maperitive release. It will also not be possible to later auto-update it with a new release when it arrives. I’m working on a revamped auto-updating system and the old updating mechanism has been turned off in beta (that’s why it’s beta). So you will have to download the beta manually, unzip it somewhere, and run Maperitive.exe (on Windows) or Maperitive.sh (on Linux/Mac). I do not recommend overwriting the previous installation, so keep that as your backup.

NOTE 2: there have been some changes in certain Maperitive script commands, so you may need to update your scripts. The changes are mostly in how the bounds are specified when exporting bitmaps or SVGs. More on that later.

NOTE 3: there wasn’t any major bug fixing done for this release. You can see the list of open bugs (it’s not the full list, some old bugs are reported in other places - I will migrate/fix those soon).

NOTE 4: the new GUI features like map elements selection and editing may be a little bit buggy. A lot of time has been invested in making them work as there were some fundamental problems that needed to be solved. Users running Maperitive on Linux/Mac may especially notice certain problems, due to the fact that Maperitive is running through Mono. In any case, please report any problems if you see them and I will do my best to fix them.

New Features

First let me say there aren’t any revolutionary new features in this beta. Most of the work I did was done on the infrastructure code, which will help me introduce cool new things in next releases.

What is new is the way how bounds are specified (bounds specify the geographical extents of Maperitive commands). Up until now, there was only one bounds parameter, but from now on you have geometry bounds and printing bounds.

Geometry Bounds

These are more or less the “old” bounds - you use them to specify the map area to download OSM data for (as an example). Geometry bounds are defined in terms of “min longitude, min latitude, max longitude, max latitude” coordinates. They are shown as a red rectangle with diagonal hatching (see the screenshot above).

Maperitive commands that act on geometry bounds have been renamed to dump-geo-bounds, geo-bounds-use-source, reset-geo-bounds, set-geo-bounds. I haven’t updated the Maperitive documentation for these yet, but you can still use help-command to get the list of supported arguments, like:

help-commands set-geo-bounds

Printing Bounds

Printing bounds are used by export-bitmap and export-svg commands to control the exported map area. What is cool about the printing bounds is that you can specify them in terms of paper size, paper orientation, paper margins, map scale and DPI resolution. This was one of the most requested features - to be able to export a map in terms of physical paper dimensions.

Printing bounds work in two modes: fixed paper mode and free-size mode. In free-size mode you are not bound to a particular paper size, so you can define the bounds in the old way (just like geometry bounds).

Printing bounds are shown as blue dashed rectangle:

New printing bounds commands are set-print-bounds-geo, set-print-bounds-paper and set-print-bounds-view. There is also a new command for setting the paper properties: set-paper.

Why Two Boundary Types?

It may seem a bit complicated two introduce two types of boundaries, but it is necessary precondition for me to be able to introduce map rotation in Maperitive (and support for different map projections). Why? Because once you rotate the map, the geometry bounds rotate, too, so they are useless for any kind of printing boundaries (which need to be rectangles parallel with the screen).

Editing Bounds Visually

There is no need to specify bounds using the command line interface, because there are a couple of new GUI features (which gave me the greatest headache). More on that follows.

Map Context Menu

Yes, the map now has a context menu (finally). So if you want to specify printing bounds, simply right-click on the map and choose Place Printing Bounds Here. Now you have printing bounds placed on the map and selected…

Selecting And Manipulating Map Elements

If you click on the geometry or printing bounds, you can select them - small yellow selection handles appear. You can drag the handles to resize the bounds. If you hold the Shift key, the resizing will maintain the aspect ratio. Hold the Control key and you will be able to resize while maintaining the center point.

Move the mouse a little bit more inside the bounds box and you will be able to move the whole bounds across the map.

Properties Window

The last major new GUI “thingy” is the Properties window. If you right-click on the printing bounds and choose Properties, a tool window will appear that lets you edit the properties. This means you don’t need to mess with command line to specify the paper size, for example.

What Comes Next

As I’ve already mentioned, Maperitive is getting a new updating system. The next “official” release will start using semantic versioning, like 2.4.2 and the old build numbering will be consigned to history. This will enable a more transparent updating system - users will be able to choose whether they want to install unstable releases or wait for the next stable/tested one.

Of course, I plan to fix some bugs too (including the ones that I’m sure you’ll report for this beta release).

Next major features: a better labeling mechanism (collision and duplicates detection, abbreviations…) and maperipy, the Python API and integrated Python scripting.

That’s really. I hope you’ll try the new beta and enjoy it. And don’t hesitate to send me your feedback (positive and/or negative)!

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