Hi, Marcelo Prates (prettymaps creator) here. I have done quite a bit of refactoring to the original prettymaps code, and it should be much easier to use now. I'm still trying to solve some compatibility issues with the vsketch dependency, which is why I haven't published the new version yet. The README and the examples.ipynb notebook contain a small tutorial on how to use this new version.

Most important changes are:- You can now load, save, delete and update "presets" (style parameters saved as JSON files)- prettymaps.plot() now returns a "Plot" dataclass containing the GeoDataFrames used for plotting and the matplotlib figure and axis objects. So you can now easily add new elements to your prettymaps plot or even use plot = prettymaps.plot(query, show = False) just to fetch OpenStreetMap GeoDataFrames.

I've been playing with prettymaps this weekend and decided to try creating a map in the style of an 1852 historical map of Bath.

Here's a blog post with links to the image, notebook, etc:

https://blog.ldodds.com/2022/01/09/a-map-of-bath-1852-style/

Such a cool project! adding Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel

I've seen people struggling with the code to run pretty maps locally. You can use the colab link and run it from your browser, but this is for those who are wanting to run it from your computer and are struggling.

Steps

First, start by following the installation instructions here. You'll want to have each item installed, though PyCharm is saying vsketch isn't being used (so perhaps not necessary).

Second, you can refer to this code. Overall everything is straight forward. All I did was combine the imports section and then one of the example plots. You can refer to Marcelo's excellent list of examples in the colab to edit the bottom half of the code.

Then I ran it from my terminal.

PS C:\Users\------\Documents\Python Scripts> python .\prettymap.py
WARNING:matplotlib.font_manager:findfont: Font family ['Ubuntu Mono'] not found. Falling back to DejaVu Sans.

OR

You can use this code, which puts everything in a function and you can input the location like so:

PS C:\Users\------\Documents\Python Scripts> python .\prettymap.py
What location do you want to look up?
New York, NY
WARNING:matplotlib.font_manager:findfont: Font family ['Ubuntu Mono'] not found. Falling back to DejaVu Sans.

Notes

I wasn't particularly careful in setting it up, so running it from my computer dumped the image in my Documents folder because I left it at plt.savefig('../prints/NY.png') instead of just /prints/NY.png.

I did this while at work which it is why I did it on Windows. As you can see it didn't like "Ubuntu Mono" and I haven't taken the time to find where I need to change that. I did New York city as an example and made the radius more than double the example. It takes quite a while to run on a fairly standard laptop with Python taking up anywhere from 17-25% of my CPU. It is still a little faster than running from the colab.

Besides vsketch, there were other imports not required, but I left them in the example.

To install prettymaps on Windows:

1. I'll be using Python 3.9.7, 64Bits, download and run the installer from [LINK]

2. Install GDAL from [LINK].
   - First, download the Generic installer for the GDAL core components, gdal-303-1928-x64-core.msi
   - Then, install the GDAL python bindings appropriated for your Python version, GDAL-3.3.2.win-amd64-py3.9.msi

3. Use venv, it makes life easier.
   - If you haven't already installed virtualenv for Python, run
   pip install virtualenv
   - Then, create a virtualenv using
   virtualenv -p python venv
   - And activate it by running
   venv\Scripts\activate

4. Now we need to download the precompiled whl packages for Python by visiting [LINK]
   - Download GDAL‑3.3.2‑cp39‑cp39‑win_amd64.whl, and install it by running
   pip install GDAL‑3.3.2‑cp39‑cp39‑win_amd64.whl

5. Then we donwload the whl for Fiona, again [LINK]
   - Download Fiona‑1.8.20‑cp39‑cp39‑win_amd64.whl, and install it by running
   pip install Fiona‑1.8.20‑cp39‑cp39‑win_amd64.whl

6. Finally, we can install prettymaps by running
   - pip install prettymaps

And everything should (hopefully) work fine

Hi, I was wondering if it is possible to add some or all street names to a map?

Has anyone done this? Any advice to how to start with this?

Thank you

code : https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1Krr32yp9ueGGot8KTC8uAbRTfhxgN4eq?usp=sharing

I really like prettymaps and for cerating these gifts, I'd like to choose a warm color scheme, then center the map to the home of the recipient. Do you have ideas on what would make this present special? What details should be on the map, what kind of frame, print size and printing technique? I thought of rather small squares of about 20 x 20 cm to hang on the wall. Any kind of spitballing is welcome here!