Mapnik is a toolkit for developing GISapplications. At the core is a C++ shared libraryproviding algorithms/patterns for spatial dataaccess and visualization. Essentially a collectionof geographic objects (map, layer, datasource,feature, and geometry), the library doesn't relyon "windowing systems" and can be deployed in anyserver environment. It is intended to play fair ina multi-threaded environment and is aimedprimarily, but not exclusively, at Web-baseddevelopment. High-level Python bindings(boost.python) facilitate rapid applicationdevelopment, targeting zope3, django, etc.License: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)Changes:
Support was added for native builds on Mac OS X, single/multi-threading variants, gdal rastering, and character encoding. The text label placement functionality was made more comprehensive. A Qt4 based viewer application was added. The internal geometry representation was changed to explicitly support multi-geometries. An optional libxml2 based map loader was added. Image quantization was added. Image "views" are supported. The "memory file" based I/O in the shape input plug-in was improved.