Openstreetmap-carto: Test more admin border colors

[vholten]

In #3489 @kocio-pl discussed changing the color of admin borders, and tested the look of dark violet borders. He mentioned two other possibilities:

1. Gray with a green tint, used by the German fork and @imagico's fork
2. Plain gray, tested by @kocio-pl in #2695

I prefer to avoid anything involving violet for the borders, see also @Tomasz-W's comment https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/3489#issuecomment-439676660
Here I test the results of the other two options, specifically:

1. The German-style gray with a green tint #50705a, with a slightly darker #445f4d for low zooms (z<8)
2. Plain gray #646464 which is a desaturated version of the German-style color, with a slightly darker #555555 for low zooms (z<8), which is the same color that @kocio-pl tested in #2695.

In addition, I feel that two other changes are beneficial:

• With gray or almost gray borders, the country labels would be shown in black and therefore in the same style as city labels. To distinguish country labels from the city labels I've made them bold.
• The second change is related to the line width of level 2 (international) borders. This line width jumps from 2 to 6 pixels between zoom 9 and 10, and I have made the change more gradual (see graph).

z4 before

z4 German-style color

z4 gray

z6 before

z6 German-style color

z6 gray

z8 before

z8 German-style color

z8 gray

z10 before

z10 German-style color

z10 gray

z13 before

z13 German-style color

z13 gray

[kocio-pl]

Thanks a lot for such careful testing of this version!

I like the idea of grey borders, I also agree with making countries names bold. The color is less disturbing than violet and (dark) green, while this is still possible to distinguish city names from country and state names. It also gives a map subtle visual dynamic.

It sounds good to change the width of borders more smooth, but in practice I like bold grey borders on z10 more than new ones (with tuned width).

[jeisenbe]

I like the slightly greenish gray borders aka German style. They look gray
at first glance , but the hint of green helps distinguish the borders from
other gray lines on the map.

Re “in practice I like bold grey borders on z10 more than new ones”

Perhaps the transition can happen sooner.
Eg admin_level=2 borders could be 2.5 wide at z7, 3.5 at z8, 4.5 at z9, and
5.5 at z10?
On Sat, Nov 24, 2018 at 7:18 AM kocio-pl [e-mail] wrote:

Thanks a lot for such careful testing of this version!

I like the idea of grey borders, I also agree with making countries names
bold. The color is less disturbing than violet and (dark) green, while this
is still possible to distinguish city names form country and state names.
It also gives a map subtle visual dynamic.

It sounds good to change the width of borders more smooth, but in practice
I like bold grey borders on z10 more than new ones (with tuned width).

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[kocio-pl]

@vholten Could you give a link so I could test both versions? Visually I like grey more, but maybe we need some tint to make it easier to recognize. Maybe just a mix between these two versions would work. However I feel we're pretty close to the proper rendering of borders now. I like the idea of making them a bit darker on low zooms, we can tune it too.

Perhaps the transition can happen sooner.

Maybe you're right, it's worth checking.

[Tomasz-W]

@vholten Looks very promising (both dark-green and gery), can you provide some high-zoom examples, espesially of dark-green borders crossing with protected area boundaries and gray borders crossing with power lines?

Examples of a places to test:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/52.2837/20.3812
https://www.openstreetmap.org//#map=14/52.2336/20.5584

[jeisenbe]

It would also be good to see some boundaries that follow rivers, and some
that have track roads on the border or closely parallel.
On Sat, Nov 24, 2018 at 5:03 PM Tomasz Wójcik [e-mail]
wrote:

@vholten https://github.com/vholten Looks very promising (both
dark-green and gery), can you provide some high-zoom examples, espesially
of dark-green borders crossing with protected area boundaries and gray
borders crossing with power lines?

Examples of a places to test:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/52.2837/20.3812
https://www.openstreetmap.org//#map=14/52.2336/20.5584

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[vholten]

Thanks everyone for the comments.

@kocio-pl The code for testing is now on GitHub: German-style color and gray

@Tomasz-W I tested the power line area, I will do the protected area and @jeisenbe's suggestions later.

z14 before:

z14 German-style color:

z14 gray:

[kocio-pl]

Well, darker German green version still looks too similar to natural reserves to me:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=11/54.4249/19.5443

In a direct comparison it's better, but the labels look quite similar:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/49.57467/22.68620

[sommerluk]

About typography: Currently all country and city, town, village... labeld are “regular” fonts. Making country labels heavier (like bold here) seems a good idea.

Note than the current Noto version (the font face we are using) has not only “regular” and “bold” (almost all living scripts) but now also more font weights like “semi bold”, “black” and “light” for most scripts.

[jeisenbe]

This issue was more of a [WIP] PR - which continued in PRs #3666 and #3716. There is a previous issue #3489 "Change the colors of admin borders" so this issue can be closed as a duplicate