I have made progress on mapnick.

It seems they have implemented this dynamic language
for all things, there is no way that it can be fast as native code.

I am dreaming of turning this expression language into a code generator
so we can use the gcc to unroll loops and to optimizations instead of reinventing the wheel. there is no way that this can be fast.

The c++ demo has been autotoolized
it compiles after I fixed the code that has been broken over time
looks like no one uses it.

run like this :
mapnik/demo/c++$ ./cppdemo .
running demo ...
looking for 'shape.input' plugin in... ./input/
looking for DejaVuSans font in... ./fonts/DejaVuSans.ttf
### Configuration error: Could not create datasource. No plugin found for type 'shape'

It seems that I need to configure something properly.
I have to say that my next task will be to remove all these shared objects
we should be able to run mapnik without installing it.

code committed:
http://github.com/h4ck3rm1k3/MapNickAutotools/commits/master