Can I just mention Maperitive http://maperitive.net/ http://maperitive.net/ You fire it up, draw a bounding box around the area you want to work with, it down

Can I just mention Maperitive http://maperitive.net/ http://maperitive.net/ You fire it up, draw a bounding box around the area you want to work with, it downloads that area from open street map as raw data which you can then theme using rule files. Plus all its commands have command-line equivalents which means you can automate much of it, so far it's been a joy to work with.