Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
The
representations module
includes point, line, area and volume stacks.
The relevant area stack comprises area, cartogram and diagram cards of
which the cartogram card is linked to the qualitative data card in the attribute
stack of the data module and the classification card in the processing
module.
The
visualisation module
is composed of symbol, diagram and pictogram
stacks. The relevant symbol stack includes cards of iconicity and value.
The iconicity card consists of pictorial and geometric symbol elements of
which the latter is selected. The value card contains proportional, range-
grade and unit-value symbol elements. The relevant range-graded symbol
element has an area attribute as the spatial reference unit which is selected
and linked to the ordinal scale element of the data modelling stack.
The
map design module
organises the overall graphic arrangement of all
selected map elements on a paper map plane or computer screen. This
module includes stacks of map face, map frame and map margin. The map
face stack consists of base map, grid and lettering cards. The base map
card includes elements of partly or fully mapped map face, the lettering
card provides for area lettering. The map frame stack includes map frame
and no-map-frame cards the latter of which is applicable here. Cards of
map legend, map title, map scale and data sources compose the map
margin stack.
The
map interaction module
includes paper, offline and online interaction
stacks. In the paper map interaction stack the view-only card is relevant.
It is obvious that the chronological description of the map compilation
process underlines the hierarchical ordering and structure of the modules.
Due to the instrument of hyperlinks this can flexibly be adapted to specific
requirements of the mapping task at hand. In an atlas context, depending
on the map topic, a number of production steps can be combined by defin-
ing reusable map patterns. Taking the population density map as an example,
possible patterns are shown in
fig. 5
.
Extending the pattern concept to the full range of maps in the Demo-
graphic Atlas of Albania, 56 maps can be produced by using predefined
density map patterns of a total of 65 maps.
