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by willtemperley 6 days ago
That’s a useful article, and as impressive as these demos are, and how smooth Maplibre is, I dearly wish people would spend more time on building map tech that is actually based on geoscience.

The heat map is a good example. What does it mean? Points per what? And I can’t bear to talk about the tyranny of Web Mercator.

Maps are so much more powerful when they mean something, and convey scientific facts or actionable evidence.

As far as I know there isn’t a permissively licensed, open source map renderer SDK that can work in a true GIS, e.g. supporting multiple projections.

2 comments

OpenLayers is probably what you're looking for. It supports multiple projections. It's a wonderful library, but a bit more ceremony is required than MapLibre/box and leaflet.
OL is great, but it's still not really usable as a GIS renderer, especially in native apps.
Is Kepler what you're looking for?

Not sure if I am pointing in the right direction but curious.

https://kepler.gl

Thanks, a quick glance makes me think Kepler is a layer on top of MapLibre GL. Good looking tools, but not professional GIS tools.

I’ll take a closer look. Really what I’m after is a native GIS renderer, like QGIS has, or ArcGIS that are part of a process to allow high fidelity map production.

Professional maps have legal and scientific meaning. With Kepler and MapLibre I see pretty pictures.