[Roadster] Roadster update

[Ian McIntosh]

Hi all,

For anyone new to the list, please check the archive[1] and see if there
are any questions you might want to answer.

Here are some updates from the past couple days:

Nate and I now have MySQL embedded in Roadster.  It actually seems to be
a bit faster in addition to being 100% setup- and maintenance-free!

I've figured out a few things that speed up the Cairo rendering by about
20%.  I have a small list of Cairo improvements that would speed us up a
bit more in certain circumstances.

Nate and I have planned out how we want to tackle map navigation.  I
think it will work much like google maps with both click-and-drag and
double-click-to-recenter (but our recenter slide will be much nicer).
Rendering and database loading will be kicked to a separate thread, so
the UI will stay smooth.

Nate is planning to put all style information in an external (XML?) file
which will allow artists (Steven, I'm looking at you:) to tweak it.

We may want to ship with several styles, eg. "high contract" style for
night driving or "fast" style for slow computers (using square instead
of round line caps, avoiding drawing "sidewalks" which double the
drawing operations needed, etc).

Finally, here's a cool site[2] to check out.  Put in something like
"Turn left on Main Street" and drool.

-Ian

[1] http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/roadster/
[2] http://www.research.att.com/projects/tts/demo.html