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Author Topic: Shitty cartographic practices  (Read 6211 times)

Henry

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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #25 on: September 20, 2021, 11:53:13 AM »

Several Rand McNally atlases have been known to mark freeways as under construction when those weren't even done in the real world (remember that Nashua loop?).
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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #26 on: September 20, 2021, 12:56:21 PM »

We're going to nitpick on municipal minutiae and give that whole Giant Greenland thing a pass?

Fortunately most people who are familiar enough with cartography to know what GIS stands for have heard at some point by now that Mercator projection is no good.

"No good"? Idk about that, I dislike projections in which north/south and east/west intersect at angles other than 90 degrees.

At least to learn the accurate sizes of places one can look up the area in an encyclopedia or similar. Maps are meant to be for locating places.

It's not just about size, it's about distance. Most maps are to scale so you can measure the distances between two places (x inches = y miles). Because Mercator, and other cylindrical projections that feature right-angle lines of latitude and longitude, do not have a consistent scale on large areas due to distortion, you cannot use them to accurately measure large distances. For most applications, Mercator simply isn't the right tool for the job–it's useful for applications like marine navigation where being able to plot a course with a straightedge is helpful, but this benefit is of no importance in most modern use cases.

Google actually pulls a kind of neat trick and has different zoom layers rendered in different projections, so that you are given maps based on more rectilinear projections at high zoom levels where distortion is relatively constant, and then it shifts to more spherical projections as you zoom out and view a large enough area that the distortion would become unacceptable.


Google's use of Mercator does at least allow one to easily compare latitude/longitude at a glance, since they do not have lines on the map for those.  Otherwise, one is stuck just clicking on the map and reading the coordinates to compare the numbers.
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wanderer2575

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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #27 on: September 20, 2021, 01:39:27 PM »

Automatically abbreviating directional elements in street names even when the direction word is actually part of the street name itself, as opposed to being a prefix. (For example: on some maps of NYC, I’ve seen West End Avenue marked as “W End Ave” , even though “West End”  is actually the name of the street, rather than it being the west section of some “End Avenue”  as the abbreviated directional would imply. Or, even worse: North Avenue in Chicago being rendered as “N Ave” .)

That's an interesting point, because one might ask why abbreviating directional elements in street names should be taboo but other abbreviations are okay.  For example, Mount Clemens and Mount Pleasant are the legal names of those two cities in Michigan but I don't give it a second thought when I see Mt. Clemens or Mt. Pleasant on maps or road signs.  However, like you, when I'm on US-10 and I see the control city for the M-30 exit is W Branch, I'm irked because it should read West Branch.  Why is one okay and one isn't?
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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #28 on: September 20, 2021, 01:44:38 PM »

Automatically abbreviating directional elements in street names even when the direction word is actually part of the street name itself, as opposed to being a prefix. (For example: on some maps of NYC, I’ve seen West End Avenue marked as “W End Ave” , even though “West End”  is actually the name of the street, rather than it being the west section of some “End Avenue”  as the abbreviated directional would imply. Or, even worse: North Avenue in Chicago being rendered as “N Ave” .)

That's an interesting point, because one might ask why abbreviating directional elements in street names should be taboo but other abbreviations are okay.  For example, Mount Clemens and Mount Pleasant are the legal names of those two cities in Michigan but I don't give it a second thought when I see Mt. Clemens or Mt. Pleasant on maps or road signs.  However, like you, when I'm on US-10 and I see the control city for the M-30 exit is W Branch, I'm irked because it should read West Branch.  Why is one okay and one isn't?

Because there's no Branch that it's west of. In my area, there are North Andover and North Reading, which are commonly abbreviated on signs and are perfectly fine.
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SEWIGuy

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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #29 on: September 20, 2021, 01:56:06 PM »

Automatically abbreviating directional elements in street names even when the direction word is actually part of the street name itself, as opposed to being a prefix. (For example: on some maps of NYC, I’ve seen West End Avenue marked as “W End Ave” , even though “West End”  is actually the name of the street, rather than it being the west section of some “End Avenue”  as the abbreviated directional would imply. Or, even worse: North Avenue in Chicago being rendered as “N Ave” .)

That's an interesting point, because one might ask why abbreviating directional elements in street names should be taboo but other abbreviations are okay.  For example, Mount Clemens and Mount Pleasant are the legal names of those two cities in Michigan but I don't give it a second thought when I see Mt. Clemens or Mt. Pleasant on maps or road signs.  However, like you, when I'm on US-10 and I see the control city for the M-30 exit is W Branch, I'm irked because it should read West Branch.  Why is one okay and one isn't?

Because there's no Branch that it's west of. In my area, there are North Andover and North Reading, which are commonly abbreviated on signs and are perfectly fine.


I am not sure why this matters.  You can abbreviate the city of "North Reading" to "N. Reading" because there is a "Reading," but you can't do the same to "West Branch" because there is no "Branch?"  I don't understand the logic.  Either you should be able to abbreviate cities with their acceptable abbreviations....or you shouldn't.
« Last Edit: September 20, 2021, 02:16:13 PM by SEWIGuy »
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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #30 on: September 20, 2021, 02:36:34 PM »

Automatically abbreviating directional elements in street names even when the direction word is actually part of the street name itself, as opposed to being a prefix. (For example: on some maps of NYC, I’ve seen West End Avenue marked as “W End Ave” , even though “West End”  is actually the name of the street, rather than it being the west section of some “End Avenue”  as the abbreviated directional would imply. Or, even worse: North Avenue in Chicago being rendered as “N Ave” .)

That's an interesting point, because one might ask why abbreviating directional elements in street names should be taboo but other abbreviations are okay.  For example, Mount Clemens and Mount Pleasant are the legal names of those two cities in Michigan but I don't give it a second thought when I see Mt. Clemens or Mt. Pleasant on maps or road signs.  However, like you, when I'm on US-10 and I see the control city for the M-30 exit is W Branch, I'm irked because it should read West Branch.  Why is one okay and one isn't?

Because there's no Branch that it's west of. In my area, there are North Andover and North Reading, which are commonly abbreviated on signs and are perfectly fine.


I am not sure why this matters.  You can abbreviate the city of "North Reading" to "N. Reading" because there is a "Reading," but you can't do the same to "West Branch" because there is no "Branch?"  I don't understand the logic.  Either you should be able to abbreviate cities with their acceptable abbreviations....or you shouldn't.

This is EXACTLY why this problem exists! It is really hard to program so many minor exceptions into a computer without just naming every single exception.

I.E.

if road_name contains(north,south,east,west):
   Abbreviate(N,S,E,W) unless road_name (Central Park west, west end avenue, north avenue…)

It’s a lot easier just to say abbreviate, or don’t.
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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #31 on: September 20, 2021, 02:36:58 PM »

We're going to nitpick on municipal minutiae and give that whole Giant Greenland thing a pass?

...but giants come from Greenland so it's okay.
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GaryV

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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #32 on: September 20, 2021, 06:04:19 PM »

The Google map lady pronounced St. Joseph Hwy near Lansing as "Street Joseph".
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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #33 on: September 22, 2021, 06:56:16 AM »

The Google map lady pronounced St. Joseph Hwy near Lansing as "Street Joseph".

Reminds me of a GPS in a friend's car that pronounced roman numbers as though they were words... for instance, IV would literally be pronounced "iv" and not "four".
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roadman65

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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #34 on: September 22, 2021, 10:31:14 AM »

I always remembered the US 209 freeway connecting I-80 with PA 33 marked when it never was.

Then General Drafting marking many NYC freeways as divided arterial streets and NY 9A as undivided south of 57th Street due to the freeway removed. NY 9A is twice divided as a boulevard between the Battery and the start of the Henry Hudson.
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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #35 on: September 24, 2021, 04:20:00 PM »

My biggest peeve is when maps use some shit version of highway shields to sign numbered routes.  I'm look straight at you, Delorme.  When they started switching over their cartography to the current style a decade or whatever ago, their interstate and US shields are just dogshit.  What the hell is that even?

They would also commit a cardinal sin of using the same line style for business interstates as regular interstate highways.  Yuck!

I have this recreation atlas in my vehicle of southern Wisconsin that attempts to show public lands and trails, but boy do they phone it in sometimes.  It's like if they didn't have the actual boundary of a park, they'd just fill in all the space enclosed by the nearest road.  But that's not as bad as using the same line style for a ramp that they do for the freeway (or whatever).  It looks terrible, cheap, and lazy, man.

Oh labeling unsigned routes on the map; that helps no one.  RandMac is guilty of this for all those 'follower' state routes that shadow every US route in several southeast states.  Unnecessary clutter.  Get rid of it.

Failure to indicate non-interstate freeways as such; the first offending example that comes to mind in the the official MnDOT map of Minnesota.  I hate that style.

Oh and speaking of Minnesota's map, unnecessary detail is bad.  Like how MnDOT tries to show the configuration of every interchange on the city insets.  On one level I get it, but it's difficult to make that look good at that scale so it's best to not bother.  At a previous gig I sometimes had to make maps where the customer wanted unnecessary detail; every road at a scale where it is not appropriate; that kind of thing.  And it looks bad.  It's like someone sneezed on the map but their boogers were all letters. :-P

If a map is using squares for interchange symbols, they look so much better when they are oriented to match the angle of the roads that are intersecting at that interchange. 

In general I hate maps that look like they were clearly auto-generated by a GIS application with very little review by human eyes.  Algorithms should only be a starting point for the final product, not a cheap-ass shortcut to churn out any ol' piece of shit.
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Bickendan

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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #36 on: September 24, 2021, 07:20:51 PM »

And this is why I miss Thomas Brothers.

Although, who knows if they would have maintained their quality had they managed to not get bought out by RMN and dismantaled.
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ran4sh

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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #37 on: September 25, 2021, 12:09:52 AM »


Failure to indicate non-interstate freeways as such; the first offending example that comes to mind in the the official MnDOT map of Minnesota.  I hate that style.


Failure to indicate a non-interstate freeway as a freeway, or as a non-interstate? If it's the former I agree.
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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #38 on: September 25, 2021, 01:24:40 AM »


Failure to indicate non-interstate freeways as such; the first offending example that comes to mind in the the official MnDOT map of Minnesota.  I hate that style.


Failure to indicate a non-interstate freeway as a freeway, or as a non-interstate? If it's the former I agree.

The MnDOT map makes no distinction between a 4-ane expressway and a non-interstate freeway.
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Bickendan

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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #39 on: September 25, 2021, 04:22:22 AM »

Same with ODOT's x.x
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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #40 on: September 25, 2021, 05:26:46 AM »

The Windows 10 Weather app. Switch to the radar view and zoom in. A couple of months ago, they changed the Interstate and US markers to the black-and-white ovals that everyone else uses for state routes, with no distinction between them.
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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #41 on: September 25, 2021, 08:08:39 AM »

Using the same shield type for every highway in a given area.

The offenders of this are typically small scale organization or businesses, from what I've seen.

It annoys me that OSM does this. I notice in the US, OSM writes out "US 20" and "I-79" in the shields to make it unambiguous, but they don't do the same in Ontario. This makes it impossible to distinguish provincial highways from regional/County roads. Particularly bad is in Kitchener, where RR 8 runs beside ON 8, OSM shows both as "8" in the same rectangular icon.

Edit: there are few spots where it says "RR 17", instead of "17", but it's very sporadic.

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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #42 on: September 25, 2021, 02:26:30 PM »

Using the same shield type for every highway in a given area.

The offenders of this are typically small scale organization or businesses, from what I've seen.

It annoys me that OSM does this. I notice in the US, OSM writes out "US 20" and "I-79" in the shields to make it unambiguous, but they don't do the same in Ontario. This makes it impossible to distinguish provincial highways from regional/County roads. Particularly bad is in Kitchener, where RR 8 runs beside ON 8, OSM shows both as "8" in the same rectangular icon.

Edit: there are few spots where it says "RR 17", instead of "17", but it's very sporadic.

This is another unfortunate side effect of OSM being built by European developers–those rectangles were intended to hold things like "A380" or "M6", and don't really work well with the shield system used in North America. (You'd think if you were going to create a system to build a world map you'd do a bit of research on that first.)

You could always go in there and edit it to be more like the way highways in the US are marked, but that would likely take a while, and it's possible you'd get some dolts who don't realize why the current system sucks reverting you.
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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #43 on: September 25, 2021, 04:33:45 PM »

You could always go in there and edit it to be more like the way highways in the US are marked, but that would likely take a while, and it's possible you'd get some dolts who don't realize why the current system sucks reverting you.
Especially early on.  I could easily see someone reverting the changes on the grounds that it's inconsistent with the rest of Ontario without waiting for the rest of Ontario to be made consistent with the change.  It's worth noting that this is also how the rest of Canada (with the exceptions of Manitoba and Nova Scotia) works as well, though I don't know the extent to which it causes confusion outside of Ontario.
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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #44 on: September 25, 2021, 08:02:11 PM »

I would just submit in general that the failure to apply cartographic practices altogether is what makes a map shitty.

This is EXACTLY why this problem exists! It is really hard to program so many minor exceptions into a computer without just naming every single exception.

I.E.

if road_name contains(north,south,east,west):
   Abbreviate(N,S,E,W) unless road_name (Central Park west, west end avenue, north avenue…)

It’s a lot easier just to say abbreviate, or don’t.

This particular problem can be pretty simply distilled into abbreviating only the directional prefix or suffix, but not the name proper. Then as long as your data source is adequate, there's no programming of individual exceptions at all.
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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #45 on: September 25, 2021, 09:03:53 PM »

Apple's text-to-speech (and probably every other one) has a built-in exception for Malcolm X to remain as is and not to treat X as a Roman numeral. And that's just one example. There are just way too many exceptions to get them all perfectly.
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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #46 on: September 25, 2021, 11:37:38 PM »

Apple's text-to-speech (and probably every other one) has a built-in exception for Malcolm X to remain as is and not to treat X as a Roman numeral. And that's just one example. There are just way too many exceptions to get them all perfectly.

Is there an example of an exception for a cardinal direction that should always be abbreviated in a proper name?
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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #47 on: October 05, 2021, 06:54:34 PM »

Mercator projections were popularized by European sea navigators as a strait line will give you true bearing along the entire path. But this comic conveys my attitude towards the Mercator projection better than anything I can say.
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Re: Shitty cartographic practices
« Reply #48 on: October 06, 2021, 10:21:39 AM »

Mercator projections were popularized by European sea navigators as a strait line will give you true bearing along the entire path. But this comic conveys my attitude towards the Mercator projection better than anything I can say.

I think the complaint is less about the projection itself, but about its use in cases where the rhumb line property is not necessary or desirable. In other words, if you use a tool the wrong way and it doesn't work, is that the tool's fault or yours? :-)
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