Flexible and efficient world and continental scale maps

[Tort]

Good questions. Let me answer them publicly to help inform you and other interested parties.

Do you mean you want a way that you can update the maps, or you want to work out a deal with the cartographer to do regular updates?

Either way, I need a way for updates to get done. This can be accomplished by me rehiring you, or you designing the map in such a way that a programmer could make a useful update interface for it. If I could get away with just updating political boundaries and maybe cities I would be quite satisfied. If you have your own programmer or write your own code you're welcome to do it as long as my website can support it. Otherwise, I might be able to find a programmer to work with you. Or, less ideally, I just contact you if and when I need updates in the future. Basically, I am open to suggestions.

If you could figure out how many normal sized sheets of paper the maps you want would fill up, with the labels no smaller than the print in an ordinary book, that figure would be a good start for me (and other cartographers) to figure out how much work this project would be.

Size and scale are up for discussion based on price, convenience, and functionality. That said, I have about 20-30 pages worth of stuff that could be mapped. I also have stuff that isn't sketch-mapped but might be used in the future that I also want map. I do not necessarily know that I want everything mapped on standard paper. How does it affect the cost to have an image that could be printed on a map brochure? That was one option I was considering.

[jwbjerk]

Either way, I need a way for updates to get done. This can be accomplished by me rehiring you, or you designing the map in such a way that a programmer could make a useful update interface for it. If I could get away with just updating political boundaries and maybe cities I would be quite satisfied. If you have your own programmer or write your own code you're welcome to do it as long as my website can support it. Otherwise, I might be able to find a programmer to work with you. Or, less ideally, I just contact you if and when I need updates in the future. Basically, I am open to suggestions.

I've never heard of maps being made with software like you describe. Sure, it's theoretically possible, but may cost a lot more than hiring someone to do the updates -- depending on how good you want the results to be. And anyway, someone is going to have to draw the new borders weather they are crunched by a program or not.

If you are willing to do a little rudimentary photoshop/gimp work, i could instead provide a simplified layered file were you could edit the political boundaries. Borders like these are created through effects, so you could move them by painting with pure black or white on the appropriate color-coded layer.

Size and scale are up for discussion based on price, convenience, and functionality. That said, I have about 20-30 pages worth of stuff that could be mapped. I also have stuff that isn't sketch-mapped but might be used in the future that I also want map. I do not necessarily know that I want everything mapped on standard paper. How does it affect the cost to have an image that could be printed on a map brochure? That was one option I was considering.

I mentioned the standard piece of paper just as a convenient measurement. A map could be as big as multiple sheets of regular paper, and printed out however you want.


* Also, if you could post a typical sample of your sketch-maps, that would also help is get an idea of the density of detail, and thus what we should charge.


* These Forums won't let you use PMs until you have made 5 posts IIRC. If you want to email me i'll get more specific on price, though with the current info it will still be a range. email: me AT jwbjerk D0T com