Hi Bruce - There is much to think about here, and also with Torsten's message. I have enough to keep me busy for several days! :-) Regarding area fills vs. points ... I take the opposite view of you. I prefer area fills. With an area fill I can completely control the boundaries of the symbol. Points do not allow that. I had several cases where clay floor and flowstone were drawn as overlapping even though that was not the case in the cave. The downside to area fills is, as you note, the symbol density at various map scales. Speaking of scale - If I were to set the map scale based on the bounding box of the cave, then it would be somewhere around 1:1200. At that scale much detail gets lost when you zoom in on the PDF. Maybe the thing to do is create TWO maps. One would be scaled for printing as the landowner wants and the other would be scaled for viewing in a PDF, particularly when zoomed in. Is that a common practice? -- Bill Gee On Friday, November 10, 2017 1:18:45 AM CST Bruce Mutton via Therion wrote:
Hi Bill If I were in your situation (as I think I have been from time to time), then I would opt for targeting an exported map that was close to the 3'x2' paper size when printed at full size. I would do this by using 'scale 1 xxx' where xxx is one of the preferred scales that gives you close to the right paper size. That is assuming the full size legend, north arrow, header text are more or less the right size for your needs, or only need minor tweaks.
Then if some symbols are not quite right, I would limit my code customisation to only those symbols. Judging by examples you have posted on the wiki, you are pretty good at this. Examples in https://therion.speleo.sk/wiki/metapost#cave_symbol_size_and_density_exampl es provide some patterns to guide changes in fill density, and the discussion near the top of the page about variables u, v and w might be helpful.
As Felix mentioned, you can tweak text and symbol size with 'base-scale 1 yyy', if you want to optimise for printing larger or smaller than full size.
Seems to me that this approach is likely to be the path of least resistance, requiring only changes to your layouts and some metapost. Optimising standard output elements for printing at the 'wrong size' just seems counter productive to me.
I should admit however that I tend to avoid using fills like clay, sand, debris, blocks, and rather use points. That avoids the fill density issues you describe, but I appreciate if you already have a large investment in area fills your approach may be tempting.
Bruce
-----Original Message----- From: Therion [mailto:therion-bounces@speleo.sk] On Behalf Of Bill Gee via Therion Sent: Friday, 10 November 2017 8:37 AM To: List for Therion users <therion@speleo.sk> Cc: Bill Gee <bgee@campercaver.net> Subject: Re: [Therion] Increase size of legend
Hi Bruce -
The reason for 1m x 0.6m paper (actually 3 feet by 2 feet) is because that is the size of the frame that the landowner wishes to display the map in. It is also the largest size we can get printed for any reasonable cost.
I've been using 1:200 for this map. Scales of 1:500 and higher make the fills on the map too sparse. A clay area might have one clay symbol in it. Scales below 1:200 make the fills too dense.
-- Bill Gee
On Thursday, November 9, 2017 1:02:00 PM CST Bruce Mutton via Therion wrote:
Hi Bill
Sounds like you need to print on a larger piece of paper. 1m x 0.6m is quite modest. I presume you are not printing your pdf file out at the full size that Therion generated it at.
I have not had any legend size issues with a 30km cave, although I must admit that I do with very small caves, where the legend ends up much bigger than the cave itself!
If you want to fit your cave to paper of a particular size, then change the scale. I rarely use anything less than 'scale 1 1000' for a cave longer than 1km.
To be precise about fitting the cave to a particular paper size, then 'export atlas' will give a better result than 'export map', although of course atlas do give quite a different end product, and take a bit more care and attention to set up well.
Bruce
From: Therion [mailto:therion-bounces@speleo.sk] On Behalf Of Bill Gee via Therion Sent: Friday, 10 November 2017 2:45 AM To: Therion Mail List <therion@speleo.sk> Cc: Bill Gee <bgee@campercaver.net> Subject: [Therion] Increase size of legend
Hello everyone -
I need to make the legend on a map larger. The cave has grown to nearly 3km of passage, and even when printed on 60cm x 100cm paper the legend is too smal to read. Even a magnifying glass does not help!
. snipped.
Thanks!
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