Considering the coarseness of the borders, I am very surprised this takes up as much space as it does. It seems like the total data size is well under the threshold of utility vs. filesize. If it were double the size, the borders wouldn't be so janky, for example.
The full file is some 700K without gzip compression
> all the data present in the complete version except for country borders and shorelines. This reduces [the size] by 200k
So about 29% is border/shore data, 71% is city names and locations
Imo a lot of cities could be dropped, especially when they're on top of each other (not visible until you've zoomed in so far to see a grey landmass and that city name) to make the shorelines more accurate
I'm also not sure how often a general location on a world map is needed. Wouldn't one more often want a low-KB map of the surrounding highways and transit lines one can use to reach the POI whose website you're currently looking at, for example? A version for every few km² on the planet could be built and you could have quite a lot of useful detail at a tenth of the size. Global low poly also has its purposes, like tracking the space station I guess, but it seems much rarer
