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See also: Wikivoyage:How to draw static maps, Wikivoyage:How to use dynamic maps, Wikivoyage:Regions map Expedition, Wikivoyage:Geocoding, Wikivoyage:Dynamic maps Expedition and WV:Lines.

The Mapmaking Expedition is a Wikivoyage Expedition to organize and standardize the maps used in Wikivoyage.

Rationale

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The old dull saw says that a picture is worth a thousand words, but when a traveller is trying to find their way around a new city, it's more like a million. A clear and simple map can save hours or even days of hassle.

As with other parts of Wikivoyage, we think that having a coherent map policy will make each map in Wikivoyage more useful. Once a traveller has understood the symbols and conventions of one Wikivoyage map, they can quickly understand a new one.

Goals

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The Mapmaking Expedition has the following goals:

  • To define preferred map file formats
  • To outline a map-making collaboration procedure
  • To enumerate different types of maps
  • To suggest guidelines for including maps in articles
  • To create a common map image layout and symbol vocabulary
  • To provide map templates for quickly making new maps
  • To collect mapmaking resources, that is, software tools and information sources
  • To understand map copyright issues and navigate them successfully

File formats

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There are two major categories of image file formats: bitmap formats and vector formats. A bitmap format treats an image as a width-by-height array of pixels, each of which has a color. A vector format keeps information about individual parts of the image -- lines, shapes, text, etc. Vector formats tend to be best for computer-generated images -- like Wikivoyage maps. They're also much easier to use for collaborative development -- it's much easier to move a line, a symbol, or some text around in a vector format than in a bitmap format.

There are any number of good vector graphics file formats, and some that are pretty standard for cartography. No vector graphics format, however, is widely supported for Web use. For this reason, we need to maintain two versions of map images: a source version in vector file format, and an output version in a Web-standard bitmap format.

There is one file format that's making serious inroads for Web usage: Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). Because SVG provides an upward compatibility path to allow us to remove the source-output dichotomy, we prefer SVG as the source format for map files. In case SVG is not available, encapsulated PostScript (EPS) files are a secondary source format.

For on-screen and printed output of maps, the lossless compression of PNG files is preferable. PNG map files are sharp and don't have compression artifacts like JPEG files do.

TLDR: SVG for source, PNG for output. (Yes, it's a long-winded explanation just to come up with 6 words.)

File size

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There is no hard-and-fast rule but as a general guideline, try not to make your map image smaller than 2,000 pixels wide.

The preferred size of a single page output file (.png) for printing at Wikivoyage Press is 3008 x 1709 pixels.

Mapmaking procedure

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A Wikivoyage mapmaker can and should create maps with whatever drawing tools they have available. When uploading a map, however, two files should be uploaded: the source version in SVG format, and the output version in PNG format. If the mapmaker's drawing tool doesn't support SVG as an output format, they should upload whatever source vector file format they can -- preferably Encapsulated PostScript, or (if necessary) Adobe Illustrator. Other Wikivoyagers with better tools can download the source file, convert it to SVG, and upload that.

The Image page for the output file should have a link to the source file.

Wikivoyagers editing an existing map really, really should work with the source SVG file if possible. After editing the file, they should produce an output PNG file, and upload both files to Wikivoyage.

See also: Project:How to draw static maps (from scratch), Project:How to use dynamic maps (using OpenStreetMap data)

Types of maps

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There are several different types of maps that are useful to travellers. Among these are:

  • City street maps. These are simplified maps of the main streets, landmarks, and other important parts of a city, as well as restaurants, bars, and other places listed in the Wikivoyage article for a city.
  • District street maps and District maps. For large cities, it might be useful to split up city street maps into district street maps, and then use a city area map to show how major parts of the city relate to each other.
  • Country or regional railway/road maps. These kind of maps give an overview of travel destinations, passenger railways, other public transport, and/or major roads and thoroughfares between cities or large travel sites.
  • Site maps. These are maps of individual tourist destinations, like archeological or historical places (temple complexes, castles) or large museums.
  • Dive sites are a new development for which there is no consensus policy yet (December 2009). See Diving the Cape Peninsula and False Bay/Pinnacle for an example of a dive site map which was accepted for a Star topic. Other alternatives may be as good or better for a given site.
  • Region maps. These are maps of a country that show the Wikivoyage-defined regions of the country. There could also be region maps showing regions within a region. And so on. There is a specific Wikivoyage expedition for making region maps.

Other kinds of maps may be useful for Wikivoyage and we will try to list them here as we think of them.

Map layout

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TBD

Map symbols

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One thing that will make our maps more uniform — and therefore easier to create, update, and use — is a library of common map symbols. We have a page with the common map symbols available.

The map symbols should all be SVG files. This makes it easier to incorporate them into maps.

Map templates

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  • Templates are available for static district and region maps.
  • Subregion colours are found in the region map template linked above, as well as in the {{StdColor}}-template, which also lists their RGB Hex-value.
  • In articles, maps with subdivisions on them are displayed using a Regionlist.
  • Wikivoyage maps use two notable fonts, DejaVu Sans and DejaVu Sans Condensed. Both can be found and downloaded here.

Copyrights

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When created, Wikivoyage maps will be released under a free licence, usually Creative Commons' CC-BY-SA. This means that any map put on to Wikivoyage can be used by anybody and changed by a later contributor as needed. With this default licence, all future derivative works will require the same license ("SA": share alike) and proper attribution ("BY"). Accordingly, most Wikivoyage maps will need to be sourced from either public domain sources or sources with a compatible copyright release.

Most map producers and suppliers will take strong exception to their work being copied. Although maps are usually copyrighted, the facts and ideas that maps represent are not subject to copyright laws. If you use an existing copyrighted map as a reference source to make your own maps, be sure that you only use it to extract location data. Your data should be compared to maps from other sources too, as some map makers draw their maps with imperfections, meaning that simply copying a map, even if just tracing it by hand, will also include those imperfections, allowing it to be shown it was sourced from them. Of course, attribute your sources.

At the scale most maps are drawn, even tiny lines represent broad brush strokes over the landscape. Commercial city street maps may overstate the size of roadways and most road maps will overstate a road size. If you are drawing a map it may be more appropriate to simplify and stylize the map rather than make it an exact reproduction of a landscape. This will also lessen the chance of being accused of a copyright violation. If more detail is needed, people can always purchase a detailed map.

See the Talk page for discussion on this issue.

Map-making resources

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Public domain map sources

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  • The United States Census Bureau makes their TigerLine map data of the United States available to the public domain. Note that this is raw database information that needs to be manipulated a bit to be of use.
  • nps.gov - The U.S. National Park Service has maps of its properties in various formats, including vector-based PDFs.
  • BigMap 2 - An open-source tool for exporting high-resolution OpenStreetMap content.

Graphics tools

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This section lists some tools for making and editing maps in Wikivoyage's preferred formats. There's a full list of graphics programs that support SVG on the SVG standard site.

  • Inkscape. The main open source vector graphics editor. Produces excellent output in SVG, PNG, Postscript or EPS. This tool is available for Linux (and other Unix variants), Mac OS X, and Windows.
  • Adobe Illustrator. A fairly expensive commercial application, widely used by graphic design professionals, imports and exports SVG. For Windows and Mac OS X only.
  • CorelDRAW. Probably the leading commercial competitor to Adobe Illustrator and also widely used by graphic design professionals. Version 10 or newer can import and export SVG format files. SVG files produced by Coreldraw lose their layers, but are otherwise good conversions with no colour change or other unexpected variations when editing in Inkscape.
  • h n . o r g triggers Wikivoyage's spam detector. I don't know why. So I will munge (#) it: http://phma.h#n.org/Software/azimap.html Azimap, by (WT-en) phma. Converts lat/long coordinate lists to SVG using the azimuthal equal area projection.
  • QGIS. Can export shapefiles, but often makes a real mess of them, especially when multiple layers are involved. For single layer .e00 to .shp it seems to work OK. GPL'd and available for Windows and MacOS and linux.
  • Simple online map editor - fast and simple output in .png format
  • Travegeo (former ShareMap) – online social mapping tool that allows importing data from OpenStreetMap and produces content on CC license. Examples of maps created with ShareMap, see Wikivoyage:How to draw static maps#SVG from Travegeo.
  • Wikivoyage Districtifier - a tool that grabs wikidata regions from the selected area and creates a bunch of Mapshapes out of them.

Map making projects/articles/discussions

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Sources for latitude & longitude

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There are a few web sites that provide useful lat/long information.

  • OpenStreetMap (OSM) – Browse the map, click with the right mouse button on the desired location and select "Show Address". The lat/long value of the location can then be copied from the text field in the upper left part of the website.
    • Nominatim – OSM reverse geocoding
    • If a destination has a geo tag, there will be a map icon at the top right of the article. If you know the area, then you can get co-ordinates for listings by going to that map (of any article), positioning the mouse pointer, then right-clicking to show lat and long info.
  • Wikipedia gives co-ordinates for most articles about places
  • Geomap – search via OSM Nominatim, provides coordinates in WV templates formats
  • Geobatcher is a tool which can take an entire section of Wikivoyage listings, and insert coordinates for up to 100 listings at a time. More instructions in article, How to use dynamic maps.
  • Multimap lets you search for cities in many countries and returns lat/long info (some problems with non ASCII chars in the names)
  • The Getty Thesaurus of Names has lat/long info for most cities in its database
  • The Global Gazetteer from Falling Rain Genomics, Inc. is another database that gives decimal geocode values for many place names around the world.
  • Richard Cyganiak's FOAF mapper – Find co-ordinates using Google Maps.
  • GeoNames - Quick and thorough geocoding

See also Wikivoyage:Dynamic maps Expedition#Sub-expedition: Fill all the latitudes!.

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