[maps.soton] Re: Future Maintainability

[Dover M.S.]

Hi Ash,

That’s really encouraging.

For me, having access to the server files so I can use them in ArcGIS would be great, as I can then use the same data in printed maps. Having this in vector format would be great.

After Easter, I’ll work on getting the various colours that are used in the printed maps for the cartographic elements documented and passed on to you.

Would you like the colours used  in RGB and/or HEX?

Best wishes

Mark
Mark Dover
Senior GIS Cartographer
Geography and Environment
University of Southampton
Room 1009, Building 44, Highfield Campus
Southampton, SO17 1BJ
Tel. +44 (0) 2380 594649
www.southampton.ac.uk/geography
Twitter:  @SpatialGeek
My current Job Calendar: http://bit.ly/1hMwF64

Too brief? Here's why! http://emailcharter.org



From: Ashley Smith <ads04r at ecs.soton.ac.uk<mailto:ads04r at ecs.soton.ac.uk>>
Date: Tuesday, 31 March 2015 11:19
To: "Dover M.S." <M.S.Dover at soton.ac.uk<mailto:M.S.Dover at soton.ac.uk>>, "baines c. (cb15g11)" <cb15g11 at ecs.soton.ac.uk<mailto:cb15g11 at ecs.soton.ac.uk>>, "maps.soton at ecs.soton.ac.uk<mailto:maps.soton at ecs.soton.ac.uk>" <maps.soton at ecs.soton.ac.uk<mailto:maps.soton at ecs.soton.ac.uk>>
Cc: "Dover M.S." <M.S.Dover at soton.ac.uk<mailto:M.S.Dover at soton.ac.uk>>, "Earl G.P." <graeme.earl at soton.ac.uk<mailto:graeme.earl at soton.ac.uk>>
Subject: Re: [maps.soton] Re: Future Maintainability


Hi all,

I've been making some progress albieit slowly. My main priority at present is to implement a tile server that iSolutions can support, as the current maps.soton one is a bunch of cached tiles generated from a VM that will almost certainly disappear when Chris leaves. So far things are going well, at least technically, I've decided that bulk generation is definitely better than dynamically generated tiles as it has far less system restrictions for the world-facing service. Once the tech all works I'll work towards getting different sets of tiles up as well, for example, one that shows roads more prominently (not too different from normal OSM) and another that looks as close as possible to the printed University maps as possible. I've not really been up to much else with regards to maps, other than ensuring the open data is up to date (Boldrewood, etc)

Chris, I'd be really grateful for the carto files we are currently using as they will provide a good starting point for this.

Mark, I too would like to see project Drake implemented here, and I'd really like to ensure Geography gets involved as much as possible, time permitting, mainly because we're IT experts not cartographers, and we want to get it right! However, I believe that iSolutions will not support a project like Drake from the ground up, claiming it to be too expensive, but a better strategy would be to simply do it anyway, involving comms as much as possible so we end up with something they like, and then it will just become business as usual that way - this is the method that worked for events.soton.ac.uk, which had no formal project or funding behind it. I am fortunate that my position within the innovation team allows me to do things like this. I can't claim to have the knowedge of open map-based technologies that Chris does, but I'm learning.

Ash
Open Data Service