On-demand Cartography for Trekkers - Advances in Cartography and GIScience - page 193

Nevertheless, the practicability hierarchy (number of lanes, lane width) is
useful for trekkers to choose their itinerary. Here the order between the
cartographical road symbolisation used to be marked by size of the carto-
graphical objects. This practice has been maintained too.
3.1.2.3 Contour lines
The notion of altitude gradient is important for all groups (cf.
figure 1 - “altitude gradient” line), but none of them need the same
graphical representation. The new contour line colour has been made
darker, in order to make the reading easier. As cross-country biking
sportsmen use contour lines much more, other relevant suggestions
are proposed for them (cf. section 3.2.3.).
3.1.3 Toponyms
Toponym typography is an important aspect for map readability (Krygier
and Wood 2005). According to the survey, toponyms allow trekkers to
locate themselves, but on maps typography is neither varied nor suitable
for to the object designated by its toponym. In order to make easier the link
between the cartographical object and its toponym, two improvements
have been done in our initial map regarding the old map used during the
users' survey:
It may be difficult to link the object with its toponym because all toponyms
have the same colour (hue and value). Therefore the letter colour could
vary with the object theme (cf. figure 4 ) : wood toponyms could be written
with the vegetation theme colour i.e. green, river or lake toponyms with
the hydrology theme colour i.e. blue, town toponyms with the building
theme colour i.e. grey.
The toponym relevance has been highlighted by font size and uppercases,
for example, the demographic town relevance for the building theme, the
covered area for the vegetation theme.
Nevertheless, toponym understanding is made difficult because of the
depth of typography hierarchy. Thus we suggest organizing a more readable