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Making maps without an external service on macOS is an exercise in dependency hell. About once a month, I have to run a script I wrote that generates a list of

Making maps without an external service on macOS is an exercise in dependency hell. About once a month, I have to run a script I wrote that generates a list of lat/lon values from company data to generate maps in python. I have to keep a separate machine on an old version of macOS just for this task because python3 broke everything. ALL of the tutorials online are out of date, broken, or simply don't work. I even contacted the people at Geofabrik and offered to pay them for a solution, but they wouldn't touch the problem with a ten meter cattle prod. I guess I'll spin up an Ubuntu VM and see if this solution works for me. But the state of mapping is abysmal. Everything is an online service or a GUI. And none of the online services can do batch processing.

pamelafox 4y ago
Another option for you to try: I recently used https://pypi.org/project/py-staticmaps/ https://pypi.org/project/py-staticmaps/ to generate maps in Python 3 on my Mac, and even got the Cairo option working. My script to generate maps for state and country capitals: https://github.com/pamelafox/chrome-cards/blob/master/generate_maps.py https://github.com/pamelafox/chrome-cards/blob/master/genera...
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  Staticmaps is great! I've used it to generate a map of our area pointing out where the BBQ area is for guests, I've used it to generate maps of bike rides and hikes I go on, it's really fun. Definitely needs a bit of light GIS knowledge but nothing someone with decent Python skills and a free-ish weekend can't pick up.
urschrei 4y ago
R and Python both have state of the art mapping tools and libraries that you can either script or use interactively in a notebook to accomplish literally any conceivable task using vector or raster data, from a simple choropleth map to geographically weighted regression to analysing satellite imagery using pre-trained models. Making publication-quality maps using point data is absolutely trivial, and there are a number of high-quality learning resources available (https://geo-python.github.io/site/ https://geo-python.github.io/site/, https://automating-gis-processes.github.io/site/ https://automating-gis-processes.github.io/site/) I started working with spatial data on the Mac platform before Python 3 had gained much traction, and I can assure you that Python 3 really didn’t break much to speak of. Every major library and tool works as well as ever, and in most cases is vastly improved.
- upbeat_general 4y ago
  I think we have very different definitions of trivial
  - urschrei 4y ago
    In the context of Hacker News and the parent comment’s lack of interest in GUI-based tools, I’m pretty confident in my definition.
  - ycombinete 4y ago
    I never trust a “trivial” on HN.
tomrod 4y ago
Weird. I've had no issues on several recent versions of Mac. I use Brew to manage the base, add gcc, and use virtual environments. No issues whatsoever.
severak_cz 4y ago
What's your source data? I am currently working on standalone map renderer written in Nim. My source data is are vector tiles and it works reasonably well...
dekhn 4y ago
I had absolutely zero trouble on Windows 10/Ubuntu 22.04 a couple weeks ago doing mapping. I downloaded the JSON location data from my Google account and this is what I ended up with: cartopy + matplotlib + shapely. I believe the examples for cartopy mostly work out of the box. Can't speak for Mac OS but I assume all those are conda-installable there as well.
deleted 4y ago
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pamelafox 4y ago

Another option for you to try: I recently used https://pypi.org/project/py-staticmaps/ https://pypi.org/project/py-staticmaps/ to generate maps in Python 3 on my Mac, and even got the Cairo option working. My script to generate maps for state and country capitals: https://github.com/pamelafox/chrome-cards/blob/master/generate_maps.py https://github.com/pamelafox/chrome-cards/blob/master/genera...

Karrot_Kream 4y ago
Staticmaps is great! I've used it to generate a map of our area pointing out where the BBQ area is for guests, I've used it to generate maps of bike rides and hikes I go on, it's really fun. Definitely needs a bit of light GIS knowledge but nothing someone with decent Python skills and a free-ish weekend can't pick up.

urschrei 4y ago

R and Python both have state of the art mapping tools and libraries that you can either script or use interactively in a notebook to accomplish literally any conceivable task using vector or raster data, from a simple choropleth map to geographically weighted regression to analysing satellite imagery using pre-trained models. Making publication-quality maps using point data is absolutely trivial, and there are a number of high-quality learning resources available (https://geo-python.github.io/site/ https://geo-python.github.io/site/, https://automating-gis-processes.github.io/site/ https://automating-gis-processes.github.io/site/) I started working with spatial data on the Mac platform before Python 3 had gained much traction, and I can assure you that Python 3 really didn’t break much to speak of. Every major library and tool works as well as ever, and in most cases is vastly improved.

upbeat_general 4y ago
I think we have very different definitions of trivial
- urschrei 4y ago
  In the context of Hacker News and the parent comment’s lack of interest in GUI-based tools, I’m pretty confident in my definition.
- ycombinete 4y ago
  I never trust a “trivial” on HN.

tomrod 4y ago

Weird. I've had no issues on several recent versions of Mac. I use Brew to manage the base, add gcc, and use virtual environments. No issues whatsoever.

severak_cz 4y ago

What's your source data? I am currently working on standalone map renderer written in Nim. My source data is are vector tiles and it works reasonably well...

dekhn 4y ago

I had absolutely zero trouble on Windows 10/Ubuntu 22.04 a couple weeks ago doing mapping. I downloaded the JSON location data from my Google account and this is what I ended up with: cartopy + matplotlib + shapely. I believe the examples for cartopy mostly work out of the box. Can't speak for Mac OS but I assume all those are conda-installable there as well.

deleted 4y ago

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