Is QGIS a Drop-in Replacement for ArcView?

June 6, 2011 Leave a Comment

Kind of thinking that has become the case after reading this from a MapInfo user:

The worst part about the rule based rendering [in QGIS] is that I have gotten so used to their power that I feel crippled when I go back to MapInfo and try to do styling :)

Yea, cartography has been the one area people still say ArcGIS is king.  Times, they be a changing though…

Is ArcView use about to fall off the ledge?

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Bing Updates Their New Map Style

December 15, 2010 3 Comments

I love the new look for Bing Maps.  I think they have made their background map perfect for basemaps.  Nice and subtle.  But their new look had some drawbacks.  Well Microsoft has addressed some of those and has a new version up and running.

We’ve updated our map style to reflect user feedback so it’s even easier for people to find where to go, how to get there, and what to expect along the way. Key changes are:

A. Increased city density while preserving a clean, visually appealing map
B. Clearer differentiation between major and minor city streets
C. Greater color contrast at the city-level so streets “pop” out more
D. Altered font sizes and contrast for crisper, less cluttered map labels
E. Improved highway shields for US and added new shields for 7 countries

Two thoughts come to mind here.  First off the changes all seem to really improve Bing Maps for the better and the second is my amazement at how agile Microsoft Bing Maps team is.  Could 2011 be the year of Bing Maps?

Bing it baby!

Update: Justin has a great overview of what’s new.

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The Geography of LOST

July 9, 2010 Leave a Comment

A fun website to explore on a Friday (not that you need my help on being distracted) is this project put together by Jonah M. Adkins, GISP of Newport News, Virginia. Geography of LOST: Retrospective is a project by Jonah where he mapped the island from the TV show LOST using ArcGIS Desktop. The maps are quite impressive cartographical and the style just catches your eye. What is even more impressive is his work has been featured in io9, the New York Post and Entertainment Weekly.

The blueprint is particularly eye catching! Great job Jonah!

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A Look at Some ESRI Press Gems

June 25, 2010 7 Comments

If there is one thing that comes to mind with the ESRI Press it is probably that book about VBA and ArcGIS. Yea not exactly stay up late reading material at all. Last year ESRI brought an out of print book back that many GIS professionals had lusted after since they were told of its existence. Cartographic Relief Presentation was on the short list of many folks and a hugely welcome edition to any cartographer.

Well following up on that book, we’ve got a new one out now, The Look of Maps: An Examination of Cartographic Design.  What I like about this book is that it gives focus on techniques, not technology, which is something sorely missed by today’s books and instructions.  The “why” of what makes good cartographic design is becoming a lost art.

But that isn’t all, I saw in the ESRI Press Catalog that another book is on its way this fall.  Semiology of Graphics is yet another book that teaches concepts, not technology and helps cartographers make great decisions about presenting their data.

So much of computer GIS is devoid of good cartography reference books to give GIS professionals guidance to make timeless maps, not just those with the default ESRI north arrow on them.  I highly suggest putting these books on your Amazon wish list as they are valuable as they are timeless.

Photographic evidence indicates Mark Twain was a big reader of cartography books.

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GIS Cartography: A Guide to Effective Map Design

June 19, 2009 12 Comments

I just finished reading a new book by Gretchen Peterson called GIS Cartography: A Guide to Effective Map Design and I really enjoyed it.  Gretchen wrote this book independent of any GIS tools so that you can apply it anywhere, from ESRI and Autodesk to PowerPoint and Web Mapping.  So much of computer books include sections on preferences, installation and best practices, that it takes away from actually learning key concepts.  Cartography is critical to visualization of spatial data and with so many different ways to visualize that information these days, you need these key concepts to ensure that you are getting your message out.

Gretchen’s writing style was enjoyable and she was able to cover detailed concepts without losing my interest.  I’m guessing because we come from similar GIS backgrounds, I really was able to follow her though process and better understand how I should look at GIS cartography.  Another think I really liked was the ability pick the book up and find a section to review so I can see this being a great reference book as well.

The chapter on fonts was particularly enjoyable.  So often I believe this is an area overlooked by GIS cartographers and can greatly affect the ability of readers to understand your maps.  Color is another area that Gretchen covers and in great detail.  The world is much more complicated than just polygons so she goes much deeper than most websites and GIS books have into how color affects your output.

GIS books aren’t cheap because they never do the volumes that general computing books do, but when you can apply them across multiple software packages and disciplines, you get much more value out of them.  Gretchen’s book is something that you can use almost anywhere with any medium and won’t get out of date.  That is a great value that most technical computing books overlook.  GIS Cartography is a great resource to have and one that I’m glad that I have in my technical library.  I’m guessing though that it will spend more time next to my computer than on the bookshelf.  Flip through the pages at Google Books and see how valuable this book is.  Great job Gretchen!

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GSS – Style your web maps with CSS client side

May 22, 2009 2 Comments

As Steve pointed out, this is does deserve two exclamation points!!

Just like CSS for styling web pages, GSS is a specification for designing maps. Adapted for dynamic data sources, GSS can define changing geographic elements, display multiple datasets, and even respond to contextual tags like “condition:poor”.

Very tasty!  Just look at this simple GSS and how you can render maps on the client.

body: {
fillStyle: "#fff",
lineWidth: 0,
},

node: {
fillStyle: "#ddd",
strokeStyle: "#090",
lineWidth: 0,
radius: 1
},

way: {
strokeStyle: function() {
return "rgba(1,1,1,0.7)"
//return color_from_string(this.user)
},
strokeStyle: "#ccc",
lineWidth: 3
},

leisure: {
fillStyle: "#2a2",
lineWidth: 3,
strokeStyle: "#181"
}

Previous conversation about styling GIS data.

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Sharing Cartography

April 21, 2009 62 Comments

There are tons of ways to store spatial data, but sharing cartography is much harder. ESRI seems to be using their new Layer Package “format” to keep the ESRI layer file with the datasets. Outside of that I don’t really see much in the way for cartography support with data layers (other than the odd ESRI LYR file offered up on FTP sites). In a way, there is much to like about ESRI’s decision to use essentially a sidecar file for storing symbology and maybe there is a more open method of sharing this information.

Most of the time when you download data, you just get the raw file format (usually shapefiles). You then drag your new downloaded dataset to your viewer (possibly ArcView, maybe uDig) and then you proceed to try and figure out how to color the map up (of course there is no metadata so you can’t figure out what field you should symbolize on) in an attempt to match that PDF of a scanned map that someone gave you.  Wouldn’t it be better if there was included symbology that allowed you to view that data layer the way the author intended?

Well as I said, ESRI’s Layer Package format does this.  The Layer file is of course a problem because you need ArcObjects to read it.  But in an ESRI world, that isn’t too much of a problem.  Outside of an ESRI world, maybe the MapServer Mapfile might be the best way to get symbology information in (heck you can write out a Mapfile from ESRI, let alone all those open source clients).  Some have said KML is that format.  I disagree because it doesn’t lend itself to storing attribute information (maybe there are ways, but I still question if KML should be used this way).  At least KML does store simple symbology with the dataset.

Ron Lake offers up SLD/SE as an option, but acknowleges that it really has no traction.  I really haven’t seen SLD used much beyond some GeoServer documentation and I’ve not seen anyone try and use SLD for storing cartography in desktop clients (NOTE: According to comments uDig does support SLD, but not be default which is a good starting point).  Sean Gillies thinks CSS is the best option but again we run into the issues of desktop clients not supporting it and probably won’t (though Sean gets GeoMonkey cred for continuing to use the term “GeoWeb” every chance he gets).

What about Mapnik?  It does a superb job at rendering great maps and Andrew Turner says there is a project that can convert CSS into Mapnik.  Now that might be a workflow.  CSS is very easy to edit and and work with and  Mapnik is great at rendering cartography (and could easily be supported by desktop clients).  CSS gets stored as a sidecar file to the dataset and the rich cartography can be read with Mapnik to render the maps as the author wishes the maps to look.  Maybe Sean is on to something after all…

If we are going to go out on the GeoWeb wall of death, well need a sidecar.

If we are going to go out on the GeoWeb wall of death, we'll need a sidecar.

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Revising the United Countries of Baseball Map

September 12, 2008 1 Comment

You might remember The United Countries of Baseball Map from last year.

click for larger view

The original map - click for larger view

Any time you attempt to make a map such as this, you know people are going to find faults with it.  Well Drew Silva took comments people made about the map on sites such as Deadspin and revised some of the boundaries of the map.  I think the refinement really tightens up one of my favorite maps that I’ve ever seen.  Check out the result below and compare with the CommonCensus Sports Map of MLB Team Fan Areas.

click for larger view

The revised map - click for larger view

Thanks to Dan for pointing this out to me.  He also offered up the Major League Baseball blackout map. Also, no need to bring up the collapse of the Diamondbacks. I’m a fair-weather fan of them so it doesn’t really hurt me too much, especially since my team is surging in the standings (but unfortunately has nothing to play for).

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That looks like a GIS map

June 9, 2008 57 Comments

I was talking about web cartography with a client today and he was saying how he can tell any map made with GIS in a couple seconds. While he did admit that he has been fooled quite a bit, he was still disappointed that there really hasn’t been mainstream improvements to quality of maps. I think he’s a little blinded by the average ArcMap document produced as most of them look alike because many GIS professionals seem to just be happy with the default symbology (or just don’t know how to take advantage of Cartographic Representations). Now this is somewhat unfair to ESRI as most desktop GIS clients seem to fall into these faults.

OK, but why is this a problem? Tonight, while watching ASU fall apart against Fresno State in College Baseball, a couple of us came up with some ideas:

  • We all graduated 1995 and earlier and we all had many cartography classes in college. Do today’s GIS students not get traditional cartographic education?
  • The ease of desktop GIS clients has made “hacking” cartography elements unnecessary. The default symbology is good enough and there is no need to spend time tweaking lines, points, or polygons.
  • Users of the maps (be it clients, project managers, creators) don’t value cartography. The savings of quickly producing a map outweighs excellent cartography.
  • The phrase, “Good enough for government work” is used way too frequently in GIS shops.

What do you think? We all see amazing cartography and some of it is very easy to produce. Why can’t we be blowing people’s minds anymore? There are tons of great books out there to help.


Just being better than a Disney map shouldn’t be enough

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Problems with mapping around the poles

January 31, 2008 21 Comments

OK, so I’m going to use my own IMS server to handle the pole projection issue but that brings up a couple issues that I’ve got to figure out.

  1. How to handle data that was not created in polar projections. Martin linked to a paper by Waldo Tobler that hits on some of the issues. Right now I’m only thinking points, but you know that the client will want polygons eventually.
  2. What do I do with global datasets? Sure the Bipolar Oblique Conic Conformal works well for the poles, but what about the equator? Folks are used to Mercator so there has to be some sort of change between the two which adds complexity. I guess one could use a 3D globe such as VE3D, but I’d rather focus on the simplicity of a 2D map.

I’m paying my penance for making fun of polar projections all these years.


Freaking polar projections are making me bald

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