OpenStreetMap Carto v2.22.0 has been released. This release focuses on labels.

The biggest change is a rewrite of landcover labelling. A landcover label is text connected to a background colour or pattern rendering, and not connected to an icon. This has been demoed extensively, and well received. It was also sent to the mailing list. The big changes are making colours better connected to the background, rendering labels on some features where they weren’t before, and sizing labels based on area.

The last deserves a better explanation. Previously, the selection and choice of what labels to render didn’t include area. It now does, avoiding placing labels on features that are only a few pixels in area at low and middle zooms, and selecting font size based on feature area. This results in a much more sensible label placement, more readable labels, better selection of what labels to place, and in many cases, more labels without impairing readability.

There remain some minor issues that can be followed up on (e.g. Glacier label colours)

Other changes were

• Ordering fixes
• Concurrent ferry rendering
• Line wrapping improvements
• Road label improvements in complex areas
• Small island improvements

A full list of changes can be found on GitHub.

Labels photo Copyright CC BY 2.0 Kelvynskee @ Flickr