[Maposmatic-dev] Issue with street name longer than street size. Use Mapnik2 advanced features?

[David MENTRE]

[ Sorry for the multiple postings on address@hidden ;-) ]

Hello,

I am part of http://maposmatic.org development team. In our current
development version, we are using Mapnik 2.0 to make ready-to-print
maps of cities with street index. We are using the Python interface of
mapnik2.

We have a long standing bug in MapOSMatic (since 2009,
http://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/index.php?27467): if the street name
is longer than the size of the street (on the generated map), the name
is not displayed. Next to the map an index of streets is generated. As
the name of such a small street
is not displayed in the map despite being visible in the index this is
very confusing for our users.

We would like to solve this bug through advanced text
placement of Mapnik2.

More precisely, there are two cases we would like to make using
Mapnik2, please look at following annotated map:
 http://bentobako.org/tmp/annotated-map.png

Like in case 1, we would like to split the long name over several
lines. How can we do this with Mapnik2? Any pointer to relevant
documentation and examples?

We also would like to reproduce case 2, were the long name is attached
through a line to the relevant street. Once again, is it possible to
do that with Mapnik2? Any pointer to documentation and examples?

In both cases, how should we proceed? Through the style sheet? Through
the Python interface?

Many thanks in advance for any help,
Best regards,
david