Mapnik

Mapnik works by reading geographical data in the format of maps, layers, shapes, lines, geometries, etc. and aggregating this data in one single database.

This data can then be made available to remote applications via queries, or used internally (if Mapnik is part of a single software).

Mapnik can read data from various sources:

ESRI

PostGIS

TIFF

OSM

Kismet

OGR

GDAL

Side note: Mapnik has been used in production for building the OpenStreetMap service, so you can rest assured it can handle any data type at any size.

You can download the Mapnik source code here. For OS specific binaries, please visit our Windows, Mac and Linux sections.

What is new in this release:

• Improved support for International Text (now uses harfbuzz library for text shaping).
• Uses latest C++11 features for better performance (especially map loading).
• Expressions everywhere: all symbolizer properties can now be data driven expressions (with the exception of face-name and fontset-name on the TextSymbolizer).
• Rewritten geometry storage based on std::vector.

What is new in version 2.2.0 / 3.0.0-rc3:

• Removed 3 depedencies without loosing any functionality: ltdl, cairomm and libsigc++ .
• Added 64 bit integer support in expressions, feature ids, and the grid_renderer.
• Added the ability to disable the need for various dependencies: proj4, libpng, libtiff, libjpeg.
• Added faster reprojection support between epsg:3857 and epsg:4326.
• Fixed postgres connection pool leaks when using persist_connection=false.
• Fixed postgres connection key to respect highest value of max_size and initial_size for any layer in map.
• Fixed potential crash in wkb parsing when postgis returns null geometry.
• Fixed blurry rendering of image and SVG icons.
• Added detection of invalid srs values when loading XML.
• Added support for specifying a base_path as a third, optional argument to load_xml.

What is new in version 2.2.0 / 3.0.0-rc1:

• Removed 3 depedencies without loosing any functionality: ltdl, cairomm and libsigc++ .
• Added 64 bit integer support in expressions, feature ids, and the grid_renderer.
• Added the ability to disable the need for various dependencies: proj4, libpng, libtiff, libjpeg.
• Added faster reprojection support between epsg:3857 and epsg:4326.
• Fixed postgres connection pool leaks when using persist_connection=false.
• Fixed postgres connection key to respect highest value of max_size and initial_size for any layer in map.
• Fixed potential crash in wkb parsing when postgis returns null geometry.
• Fixed blurry rendering of image and SVG icons.
• Added detection of invalid srs values when loading XML.
• Added support for specifying a base_path as a third, optional argument to load_xml.

What is new in version 2.0.0:

• Added minimum-path-length property to text_symbolizer to allow labels to be placed only on lines of a certain length.
• Added support for png quantization using fixed palettes.
• Added AlsoFilter functionality - http://trac.mapnik.org/wiki/AlsoFilter.
• SQLite Plugin: optimize i/o using shared cache and no mutexes.
• Directly link input plugins to libmapnik to avoid having to set dlopen flags from binding languages.
• Throw an error during registration for fonts which Freetype2 does not report a family or style name.
• Fixed quoting syntax for "table"."attribute" in PostGIS plugin (previously if table aliases were used quoting like "table.attribute" would cause query failure).
• Added the ability to control the PostGIS feature id by suppling a key_field to reference and integer attribute name.
• Added alternative, more robust proj_transform functions to project a bbox using more points than just the four corners to ensure an optimally sized bbox despite proj4 out of bounds conditions.