newbie questions - maps
Ashton Shortridge wrote:
On Monday 16 November 2009 08:53:03 Carson Farmer wrote:
... In addition, I use linux (Debian) and the desktop GIS tools that
I tried (svSig, Qgis, and some more) did not provide publication quality
maps.
I would strongly suggest you take another look at some of these
packages (especially QGIS).
These are relatively young projects, and are growing (changing)
quickly. For example, just
recently, some very advanced symbology enhancements have been made to
the QGIS project,
and will likely be available in the next release (due out next month).
Though of course, for graphs
and other statistical outputs, nothing beats R!
Carson
Let me stress that I like qgis very much. Only at the time I tried to make pub. quality maps with qgis (using version 0.9-2) it could not export these kind pub. quality maps. Maybe now, or in the close future, qgis or other open source tools will support pub. quality maps. I would like that, being able to just take the north arrow and drag and drop it would be much better than specifying the spatial coordinates. So for me R was the best solution at the time (the only btw), but qgis might be a better alternative in the future. But not yet (please correct me if I'm wrong). cheers, Paul
Let me strongly second Carson's points. As a Debian user, I like QGIS and use it for my own visualization purposes. Being able to drag and drop a shapefile is pretty awesome. I suspect QGIS will continue to improve in its ability to render maps. That said, I don't think publication-quality output is what these software are about, at least not yet. R on the other hand gives you tremendous control. I used it exclusively for all maps, as well as other graphics, in my latest article. The same goes for non-free GIS software, by the way. My cartographer colleagues who use ArcGIS generally haul mapping output from there into other packages for font and other effect rendering. Yours, Ashton
Drs. Paul Hiemstra Department of Physical Geography Faculty of Geosciences University of Utrecht Heidelberglaan 2 P.O. Box 80.115 3508 TC Utrecht Phone: +3130 274 3113 Mon-Tue Phone: +3130 253 5773 Wed-Fri http://intamap.geo.uu.nl/~paul