may 2002 archives

Thursday, May 30, 2002

Only a few weeks ago when I set up the SVG section, I mentioned that the future might be, that the future of combining SVG and XHTML is perhaps inline SVG, using multiple namespaces in the same document! However, technology has overtaken me there! At the end of last month, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released the first Working Draft of a Document Type Definition (DTD) that integrates SVG, XHTML and MathML. It uses the SVG 1.1 modularisation (e.g. SVG Basic and SVG Mobile). It forms an excellent basis for scientific and engineering documents that include formatted text, lists, tables, formulae and interactive diagrams; early implementations include Mozilla and Amaya. Hey, not to mention maps!

Another interesting feature of the new SVG 1.1 is the Geographic Coordinates Section that uses and references the work that has been done at OGC. However, the current explanation is a bit unclear, as mentioned in the svgmapping mailing list. This is really the way forward. This is another project to work on. In other words, this weekend I will focus on my thesis and have the blogging project to take my mind off my study now and again.

“Blog the map” has more or less been the motto for this website for some time. At The New York City Blogger Map website, the motto is “Map the Blog”. A few months ago, I posted a similar suggestion on the Blogger Discussion Forum, but I got carried away by the Blogger API. There is a much simpler solution. First things first. The New York City Blogger Map do a really good job. With my knowledge of online mapping, I hope to give it a go myself over the weekend...

Sunday, May 26, 2002

Was just listening to one of the Dutch radio stations online. The current political situation was put into a new perspective by broadcasting the classic dialogue between Jacobse & Van Es, recorded in May 1980! Van Kooten & De Bie are really the greatest. How much do I miss them. Can hardly believe there are now people who have never seen their programmes: in feite sowieso überhaupt in principe.

Two weeks have gone by. Not much exciting happening in the mapping arena. I went sailing for a few days last week on the Solent. We started off at Southampton to make it across the Channel to France. Unfortunately, the weather decided otherwise so we only made it as far as Portsmouth and Cowes on the Isle of Wight. Was really nice to be on a sailing boat, or had a better say “yacht”? Sun, sea, and wind. What more could I ask for? Really look forward to giving it another try to sail all the way to France!

Thursday, May 16, 2002

All right, even on this website, the elections for the Dutch national government cannot go unnoticed... Only four years ago during the previous elections, I was working at the national newspaper Trouw as a cartographer. The role of cartography to inform readers about the election results has changed significantly.

Unfortunately, Trouw has not progressed as far publishing two diagrams on its website: the first diagram shows the number of seats per political party before and after the elections. The second diagram shows the loss and gain of seats per political party. Not much new here. Those are the very diagrams I worked on four years ago: just the data behind the diagrams and the politcal parties are different. But to be fair, the Volkskrant has not much imagination either. De Telegraaf hasn't even bothered to create infographics and presents the data in a table.

On the website Nederland Kiest, users can select various maps to inform themselves. Maps show the percentage of people who actually cared to go to the voting booth at all, the predominant party per municipality, or the percentage of votes for a particular party. The maps have been produced by ESRI Nederland using ArcGIS WebGIS software. The base data was provided by the Topografische Dienst, the Netherlands National Mapping Agency, whereas the thematic data was sourced from Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, the Netherlands Central Bureau for Statistics.

The NRC Handelsblad provides an interactive mapping application on their website, taking full advantage of the state-of-the-art technology. The NRC Handelsblad teamed up with Geodan to use MapXtreme WebGIS software to create this application. Although the interaction would be very useful to create your own mental map, the user interface is not very intuitive. Technically speaking the project has succeeded, but from a user's point of view, I would say that there is still a lot to be done. Maybe an interesting topic for an article?

Tuesday, May 14, 2002

The other day, there was an interesting thread on the Avenza mailing list regarding scale bars. The question was which of the following is the correct or most widely accepted terminology for stating scale on a map:

Scale in miles
Scale of miles

An approach I have been taught is to keep the scale bar as simple as possible. The fact that it is a scale is implied by the graphic presence of the scale bar (with its units). One should therefore only enter the metres, kilometres, miles as appropriate and leave off the word “scale” or “scale of”, or “scale in” altogether. Graphic scales eliminate the need for a sentence or numeric scale, and they're more comprehensible by the (largely geographically illiterate) public.

Another value of the graphic scale is that it survives enlargement or reduction by scanners and photocopiers, which destroys numeric scales. This is very important when you don't have much control over the actual scale of representation. Especially with SVG, users can zoom in and out themselves to define the best view point.

Monday, May 13, 2002

After talking about it for a long time, there's at last a little piece of real SVG on my website! The previous rants of mine have attracted a lot of internet traffic from search engines: people looking for information about SVG, XSLT, GML, and GIS (this posting will attract a lot of traffic I guess...). I hope the forthcoming SVG section will cater for these people.

At the moment, it only provides some basic information to be able to start serving SVG. Later on I would like to address the more geographic aspects, such as converting GML to SVG, generating SVG from GIS packages, and cartographic aspects such as projections. So stay tuned...

Wednesday, May 08, 2002

GPS, maps, and PDAs on the golf course: would this be a cunning plan to convince managers of the usefulness of location-based services? The company LinksPoint, Inc. has developed the StarCaddy software to display a digital map of the course on your PDA, using GPS to give you the exact distance to the green, doglegs, sand traps, water hazards or any other course feature. With just a tap on your PDA you can analyse all of the key elements of the course to improve your club selection and your game!