Customizing Shortbread

Use cases

• Custom styles: Hiding features in a map or highlighting specific features can be done with a custom style. Since styles are applied in the browser, you can use existing Shortbread tiles. See Rendering Styles.

• Additional POIs: If some POIs are missing or specific attributes for styling are not included, then you have to create custom Shortbread tiles or an additional tileset.

• Route relations: If you want to highlight route relations (e.g. bus lines) in your map, then you have to create custom Shortbread tiles or an additional tileset.

• More tags for special objects: If you want to create specialized maps requiring additional tags, then you have to create custom Shortbread tiles or an additional tileset.

• Additional tags for streets or buildings: If you want to create specialized maps requiring additional tags for streets or buildings, then you have to create custom Shortbread tiles.

• Other / more languages: Currently Shortbread tiles include name, name_en and name_de. It is a goal for Shortbread to add support for other languages. In the meantime you have to create custom Shortbread tiles, if you need more languages.

Customizing Shortbread

Creating custom Shortbread tiles

See Creating Shortbread Vector Tiles for workflows and tutorials to create custom Shortbread tiles.

The main options for custom configurations are:

• tilemaker config (JSON, Lua)
• Planetiler config (YAML, Java)
• osm2pgsl config (Lua)

Basic rules

• Keep tile size small
• Don’t break base map styles
• Discuss core extensions in shortbread-docs repo

Using Shortbread with additional tilesets

Tileset combinations

There are pros and cons for creating custom base map tiles or creating additional tilesets:

• Extended base map tiles
  • No additional tiles
  • Can break base map styles
  • Selfhosting required
• Additional tilesets
  • Additional tile source in style
  • No easy relation to base map tiles
  • Potential duplication of data

Server-side combination

Mapbox vector tiles allow concatenating tiles on server-side.

There are some drawbacks though:

• Requires a service
• Not supported by all tile servers
• Caching more difficult