Lars Aronsson wrote:
Magnus Manske wrote:
For a country, city, region, river, lake, mountain
etc. one would type,
say, "[[map:1.2.3:4.5.6]]" to get a rectangular map. That would be
generated by some free map service (there are some, though I don't
remember any URL).
Please tell me when you remember the URL.
I dug around some more; the software Caltrop has been using is GMT
(Generic Map Tools;
http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu/) via the on-line map
creator at
http://www.aquarius.geomar.de/omc/omc_intro.html
With some tweaking, I believe we could get attractive, useful maps (at
least at the national level) using the same software, which we can run
off our own server so as not to be dependent on a third party which may
vanish or cut off service.
MapBlast used to provide
this service, but they closed it earlier this fall.
The syntax that I use on susning.nu is map:12.45:67.89:20000
where 12.45 is decimal degrees north, 67.89 is decimal degrees east
(or negative for south and west) for the center point of the map,
and 20000 indicates that one meter on the screen is 20000 meters
in the real world (assuming a standard 100 dpi screen). That is the
syntax that MapBlast used to have in their CGI URL interface.
That sounds like a nice syntax for starters. (Ultimately we should be
able to specify size, map projection, national/subnational borders,
marking of major cities.)
For further discussion, I recommend moving to the meta wiki:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipediatlas where I've tossed up some
incoherent thoughts. Coherize them if you dare!
-- brion vibber (brion @
pobox.com)