vector mapping?

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Originally Posted by mwsasser

I do have quite a few paper makes. I'm trying to make it easier on me by having one document as a "go to." If inkscape is the wrong thing to use, what do you suggest?

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You might try a GIS like QuantumGIS, uDig, or OpenJUMP.

GIS is the tool used to do this sort of thing with REAL geographic data and so can handle things like varying visibility and symbolization with scale. (So as you zoom in layers can appear, disappear, or change their appearance) It is NOT just a fancy graphics program though, in fact it is very, very different from graphics software. The maps you get out are not meant to look pretty, they are meant to be functional. If you want to make them pretty, you can export to an image and edit it in a graphics program like Inkscape. Also the entire conceptual model and the way you do things are quite different.

You can even load your GIS data into a WMS server like MapServer or GeoServer and have a scrollable, zoomable web map like Google Maps or Open Street Map.

Why would I use GIS for hand drawn paper maps?

You wouldnt but you would use them for vector ones... like what you asked for.

I'm just confused because you talked about paper in an earlier post.

What exactly do you want?

What range of scales? Do you want to just manage the information or do you want 'pretty' maps that look 'hand drawn'? Do you want visibility and symbolization (How things are represented visually) to vary with scale or do you just want to zoom a fixed image? Do you want to be able to adjust projections to suit the scale?

I suppose that I should just give up. I don't know if I have the language to describe to you what I am trying to do. I don't want to build a brick outhouse just a dinky scalable document. Thanks for your help though guys.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mwsasser

I suppose that I should just give up. I don't know if I have the language to describe to you what I am trying to do. I don't want to build a brick outhouse just a dinky scalable document. Thanks for your help though guys.

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If ALL you want is straight up scaling. You don't want to say, turn dots representing cities into MAPS of those cities as you zoom in, and you don't want your lines and symbols to stay the same size with less important ones popping up, and your world is flat, or you aren't worrying about the distortions from mapping a spherical world, then Inkscape should be just fine.

It will let you draw a picture and zoom in on it without it getting pixelated or blurry and it provides a lot of cool tools for making your map pretty.