First off: I really want to express my thankfulness on Histor's work on it's own Histor style map. But that being said, I also want to open a debate on the style itself and which direction it could go, which might be controversial: what about a complete overhaul of the Histor style based on the current standard mapnik style? Back in the days, I assume Histor style used to be a derivative of the then standard mapnik style, but with extra features such as ports, railroad differentiation, i.e. all things the standard map style lacks. But then the standard style had a complete redesign, and the Histor style didn't follow and kept the old style. And now, Histor is editing the style to fix the problems the old style had, and which is exactly the reason why mapnik itself changed to its new style too. But the problem with that is, with all respect, the current Histor style seems a bit... amateurish. And that's normal, because the new standard mapnik style probably took a ton of work by a lot of different people to get at the point it is now.
I really think it would be better to go back to the essence of what Histor style was all about: the standard style + all extra features it lacks. Currently, this project has really evolved into a completely different style, in stead of an improved standard style. All work on changing the colour of roads, matching landuses with that, etc. is in a sense really reinventing the wheel. And because making a map that's pleasant to the eye is really a very hard task this will still need a lot of work, all to end up with a map that's just "different" than the standard map, but not "better". And at this point, I think we're still at "worse", which means a lot of people won't use the Histor style as their de facto standard style. If started over with the current standard style as a base, every change on the Histor style will make the map better than the standard map, while now changes only try to catch up with it. This will make it possible for everyone who knows about the existence of Histor style to use it as their de facto standard, because there are no drawbacks in comparison to the original standard style and only real improvements exist.
So I'd really like to open a debate on this. Either Histor style could be kept as it is now, with gradual improvements being made by Histor, or a more thorough redesign using the standard style could be considered. And I know, Histor, you spent lots of time in creating your style and it is still a really useful tool I really want to thank you for. This is absolutely not meant to discredit you, I just want to open a debate to make your style possibly even more useful for more people. And I also know that doing a complete overhaul might be a big undertaking, which you might not want to take up. But luckily, this is just a debate to see what the opinions are.
So please everyone give your opinions about the idea, and Histor, still a big thank you for your work till now and let us know if such an overhaul project would be something you could support or not.
Greetings,
Squizie3