WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]

ljegou's comments

ljegou | 10 years ago | on: World air pollution map

The large circles often mask the little ones. No legend, no symbol scale, no color scale. That's not how you do thematic cartography.

ljegou | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: What are the best technologies you've worked with this year?

- WebServices, to provide access for R, Python, and spatial calculations (WPS norm). Complex calculations without installing any client software, anywhere with an Internet connection.

- PostGIS raster capabilities (at last some raster storage and computing inside the database).

- Devon:Think / Bookends / Nisus Writer : Scientific papers and books intelligent storage, bibliography management and scientific writing.

ljegou | 15 years ago | on: Help Plzzzzzzzzz

And repeated letters are lame and childish (but we have been spared the exclamation points).

ljegou | 15 years ago | on: The New York subway-map wars, continued

Thanks for this very interesting report of the conference. The positions and arguments are well and shortly exposed. The boundary between diagram and geographical map is in question with subway "maps", and the graphic design is still a challenge.

I'm glad to see that the subject of map design is alive and expanding with new media. However, i'd like to see more references to semiology and perception psychology :-)

ljegou | 15 years ago | on: Version Control for Writers

I'm more interested by the versioning function. For book-size manuscripts i work chapter by chapter + annexes.

ljegou | 15 years ago | on: Version Control for Writers

I love the idea of automatic secure saves for my writings. I can use flashbake instead of dropbox. But i'd like to have a clear understanding of GitHub free plans caveats, especially about privacy of the repos :)

ljegou | 15 years ago | on: Why Do Google Maps’s City Labels Seem So Readable?

Google Maps is not useless, far from it. The projection method chosen (Mercator) is useless for the small scales, and misleading. Except if you are a (XVII° century) marine navigator.

De-zoom and look at the apparent continent sizes, it's just horrible. Half of emerged lands in antarctica ? Groenland the size of Africa ? Think about children exposed to those maps before a good atlas is showed to them.

I co-wrote a paper about this topic, but it's in french : http://mappemonde.mgm.fr/num20/internet/int08401.html

A technical choice (summary : it's easier to have perpendicular parallels and meridians) has prevailed upon a geographical choice. It's not very complicated to link the projection to the scale of the view, all serious geographical internet portals are doing so (IGN, Ordnance Survey, etc.)

ljegou | 15 years ago | on: Why Do Google Maps’s City Labels Seem So Readable?

The micro-scale graphical design is good. It's a pity, however, that big geographical and data quality blunders are present on Google Maps.

Examples : world projection (Mercator, useless), lack of metadata (dates of the images ?), choice of labels at medium scale (especially with the 'Relief' maps).

Such discrepancy between good graphical precision, esthetics and geographical imprecision, lack of quality information are misleading a large part of the public.

page 1
more