Like the title says, how would someone configure Mapnik to use the Waterman butterfly projection ?
Otherwise, what other tools would be able to render using this projection ?
Like the title says, how would someone configure Mapnik to use the Waterman butterfly projection ?
Otherwise, what other tools would be able to render using this projection ?
I don't think mapnik or proj4 are able to render that kind of projection.
According to that excellent post, Openlayers with protovis library would be able to render not exactly the Waterman projection but the Fuller projection (also called Dymaxion).
You even have an online example here.

It's not for Mapnik, but at least the Polyhedral Geographic Projections plugin for d3.js can render that projection.

Example from http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4458497:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<style>
body {
background: #fcfcfa;
}
.stroke {
fill: none;
stroke: #000;
stroke-width: 3px;
}
.fill {
fill: #fff;
}
.graticule {
fill: none;
stroke: #777;
stroke-width: .5px;
stroke-opacity: .5;
}
.land {
fill: #222;
}
.boundary {
fill: none;
stroke: #fff;
stroke-width: .5px;
}
</style>
<body>
<script src="http://d3js.org/d3.v3.min.js"></script>
<script src="http://d3js.org/d3.geo.polyhedron.v0.min.js"></script>
<script src="http://d3js.org/topojson.v1.min.js"></script>
<script>
var width = 960,
height = 550;
var projection = d3.geo.polyhedron.waterman()
.rotate([20, 0])
.scale(118)
.translate([width / 2, height / 2])
.precision(.1);
var path = d3.geo.path()
.projection(projection);
var graticule = d3.geo.graticule();
var svg = d3.select("body").append("svg")
.attr("width", width)
.attr("height", height);
var defs = svg.append("defs");
defs.append("path")
.datum({type: "Sphere"})
.attr("id", "sphere")
.attr("d", path);
defs.append("clipPath")
.attr("id", "clip")
.append("use")
.attr("xlink:href", "#sphere");
svg.append("use")
.attr("class", "stroke")
.attr("xlink:href", "#sphere");
svg.append("use")
.attr("class", "fill")
.attr("xlink:href", "#sphere");
svg.append("path")
.datum(graticule)
.attr("class", "graticule")
.attr("clip-path", "url(#clip)")
.attr("d", path);
d3.json("/mbostock/raw/4090846/world-50m.json", function(error, world) {
svg.insert("path", ".graticule")
.datum(topojson.feature(world, world.objects.land))
.attr("class", "land")
.attr("clip-path", "url(#clip)")
.attr("d", path);
svg.insert("path", ".graticule")
.datum(topojson.mesh(world, world.objects.countries, function(a, b) { return a !== b; }))
.attr("class", "boundary")
.attr("clip-path", "url(#clip)")
.attr("d", path);
});
d3.select(self.frameElement).style("height", height + "px");
</script>