Commons:Graphics village pump/January 2008

How to photo fold-out maps

I got two snapshot of a fold-out map from an 1909 out-of-copyright book. See Image:LA2-stridfin-overviewmap-left.jpg and Image:LA2-stridfin-overviewmap-right.jpg. I have a 10 megapixel Canon EOS 400D camera and a home-made copy stand, giving me good results for normal book pages, corresponding to 300 dpi scans. But these fold-outs are taken at a larger distance, corresponding to scans in approximately 150-200 dpi. The problem is I don't know how to get the map flat. It's a library book so I can't cut the map out from the book. I guess I could also improve on the uneven lighting, but holding the map flat is my biggest problem for now. Any ideas? --LA2 07:14, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

You can request to graphist of the Graphic Lab School to edit your photo, simply. 210.203.61.15 17:33, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

w:hugin (software) will be able to stitch and flatten those maps.--Jarekt 16:09, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Generally my experience is that maps tend to have taken permanent damage from folds and even in cases where I have been able to leave the map between books for a few weeks the damage needs to be edited out.Geni 12:18, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

SVG help

Can someone with more experience than I have editing SVG files please go to Image:Stephankiez.svg and see if you can remove the big black box? Thanks! —Angr 21:22, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Done. Editing the source by hand, looking for instances of <rect I found the offending rectangle at line 322.

The file size resulting from converting all the text to paths is truly horrendous. If we can't get text to render properly, is SVG really such a boon for this kind of thing? Globbet 00:27, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! I don't know how to read the source code, and I couldn't find the element in the picture itself. Personally, I see no reason it couldn't be a PNG, but I know from experience that if I upload the PNG, someone will come along sooner or later and slap a tag on it saying "this should be an SVG", so I thought I'd save them the trouble. —Angr 05:29, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Paths are now text, size is now <10% of the previous size. HTH Stannered 17:20, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Dynamic/Server-Generated SVGs

As far as I know, there's currently no way of getting server-generated SVG files. Personally, I think that this would be very useful in a number of scenarios. The first one that comes to mind is world maps. There are world maps for every purpose under the sun; most use today's borders and just recolour countries to represent statistical data. Each SVG world map is 1.5MB (depending which source file you use, but at any rate it's rather big), and there is a lot of replicated information. In addition, editing the SVG source is necessary, unless you want to mess around in Inkscape, but that doesn't like the world maps much (possibly due to their size, among other things). Surely it would be much simpler to have a template-like syntax along the lines of {{Image:WorldMap.svg|usa=0000ff|france=00ff00|uk=ff0000|rest=191919}}, where the SVG stored on the server is constructed using template syntax to replace each colour with a parameter (or a default value). This would vastly reduce the storage space necessary to store all the world map images, and would also make it far easier for users to generate maps (and reduce the number of highly-pixellated maps generated by users who don't know better), and encourage the use of the SVG format for maps.

Is there a function like this at the moment? Do other users think that it would be a useful function to have available? If so, how would we go about asking developers to implement it in MediaWiki (I haven't done this sort of thing before)?

Regards, Stannered 00:57, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Googling reveals that a similar feature has already been requested at [1]... Stannered 01:00, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I've been wanting this for a long time, but I figured it was asking too much. SVG wiki-style. We could have a separate namespace or something just for editing SVGs. Having blocks of code to reuse in the same way we do templates would be awesome. So many possibilities. Thanks for the bug report link. Voted. Rocket000 14:22, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

See this recent Pie chart SVG script

en:Wikipedia:Graphic_Lab/Research_and_Development#Script_now_hosted_on_freeshell.org
For things such "{{Image:WorldMap.svg|usa=0000ff|france=00ff00|uk=ff0000|rest=191919}}", this has been discuted time by time since 2006 on the french Graphic lab. Also, I'm in Taipei since last summer for study, and I went to the Wikimania 2007 to talk [with other things] about such SVG template but I was forbidden to go inside to simply talk for $ reason (What to see more => user:Yug).

Anyway, thing like {{Image:WorldMap.svg|usa=0000ff|france=00ff00|uk=ff0000|rest=191919}} or such as {{Image:human scheme.svg|head->tête|nose->nez|leg->jambe|}}... in the aim to avoid waste of time... IS POSSIBLE and is REALLY NEED !!! 16:32, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

We also talked about Inclusion of other linked image into an SVG, which may allow to share a same background for several SVG. The 2 proposals are linked and should work together. 16:49, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Making vectors in MS Paint, are we?

I stumbled across this little template {{Created with Microsoft Paint}}. lol Rocket000 15:10, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Server-side image rendering stalled?

Is there a server-side problem with image rendering at the moment? In general images seem sluggish to appear, and Image:Health care systems.svg (which I just uploaded) refuses to display at all (and I can't see anything out-of-the-ordinary at all in the SVG)... Ta, Stannered 14:35, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

My image renders now, but images are still sluggish generally... Stannered 14:37, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Topographical background maps

I know of demis.nl as a source of free raster/bitmap maps but it takes a fair bit of stitching to make anything at all detailed. Also their elevation color choices are too green for the relative elevations I'm working with... I am seeking a source (free of course) for a topographical map of the Great Lakes, starting from west of the end of Lake Superior (so it will include the Iron Range of Minnesota, and extending far enough south/east to include Pittsburgh and Buffalo. Any suggestions? A vector one would be awesome but raster is good enough. If the source can allow for turning borders/city labels on and off that would be even better. Thanks. ... for reference this one: Image:Sioux-Aufstand.png is pretty close to what I seek detailwise, although it is too far west and has things on it I don't need :) ++Lar: t/c 03:32, 28 January 2008 (UTC)