[GRASS-dev] future thematic cartography in GRASS [was: Re: [GRASS GIS] #974: [Patch] add option to d.vect to make symbol size proportionate to square root of size_column]

Moritz wrote:

What is still missing right now is an easy way to display a
combination of color-classified and proportionately sized
symbols. It is possible to declare an arbitrary numeric
column as z-height and use that with zcolor, but I don't
think this is very straightforward and even though ISTR you
don't see the need for that, cartographic theory (at least
for thematic maps) still calls for reduced numbers of
classes.

The debate rages on whether class-splitting is a good idea or not.
<2c> In my personal opinion it is open to huge misleading abuse both
intentional and unintentional, and so I try to avoid it. Probably
even more so than the potential to abuse statistics because it also
plays tricks on your visual perceptions. For raster maps the best
compromise I know is to include continuous color maps with contour
lines over the top. For vector maps I don't know of a good compromise,
or even if one is possible. </2c>

However, if we go this way, I would need to add a flag to
d.vect which allows sorting symbols with the largest in the
back. This is absolutely necessary for readability. However,
this implies a fundamental change in the d.vect code,

As this is just the beginning, I would prefer a new module for that
along the lines of d.vect.chart.

why not simplify the name to just "d.thematic"?

regards,
Hamish

ps- see also v.colors and the new extra/ring symbol

On 03/03/10 11:44, Hamish wrote:

However, if we go this way, I would need to add a flag to
d.vect which allows sorting symbols with the largest in the
back. This is absolutely necessary for readability. However,
this implies a fundamental change in the d.vect code,

As this is just the beginning, I would prefer a new module for that
along the lines of d.vect.chart.

Ok, I'll go in this direction then.

why not simplify the name to just "d.thematic"?

The idea was to simplify modules and so to separate areas from symbols (incl. lines), but it is obviously possible to put everything together into one module.

ps- see also v.colors and the new extra/ring symbol

Yeah, we could include discrete color schemes in v.colors by feeding it class breaks.

So in summary this means as tasks at hand:

- write an alternative d.vect with attribute-based selection, allowing sorting of symbols largest in the back

- enhance v.colors to provide discrete color schemes (possibly including the color brewer schemes which are licensed under the Apache license)

- write a script which combines the existing tools (v.class, v.colors, d.vect / d.vect2) to allow for thematic cartography

- write a module/script which displays thematic legends (color classes and sizes)

This would make d.thematic.area obsolete.

As mentioned, my time is limited and I don't know how quickly I could do all this. If anyone's interested in helping, this would be great.

Moritz