Update visual appearance

[rogerwiklund]

I love weathermap but the visual appearance is kind of dated.

Compare this drawing (prob. Visio)
http://news.reannz.co.nz/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/REANNZ_MAP_July12.jpg

To the real weathermap:
http://weathermap.reannz.co.nz/

If it could look more like the drawing that would be awesome. Smooth curved lines, modern fonts etc.

[howardjones]

This is where GD is starting to weigh us down. It has pretty bad font handling, and not-great anti-aliasing. I'd like to get to something like that too. I've been experimenting with SVG, but that also has some issues with fonts, unless you run javascript in the browser to generate the SVG.

There are other solutions like Cairo, but then the problem is php bindings.

That said, I've got a nice SVG testbed for curved links, so far, all client-side (which potentially means the editor could let you drag links around bends 'live'):

[howardjones]

I'm going to close this, and leave a pointer to #23 where there is discussion of allowing other rendering engines. The "modern fonts" part of your request is possible right now - it's just hard to package fonts with open source software for licensing.