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Cartographic software capabilities and data requirements: current status and a look toward the future.

Article Excerpt
Software

Cartographers have yet to universally accept a single mapping software program for all their needs. The software that is available to cartographers was largely developed for other primary purposes, but cartographers have discovered ingenious ways of manipulating the software for their mapping purposes.

Modern-day mapping usually requires a combination of software capabilities most often realized with illustration and geographic information system (GIS) software. GIS is used, at the least, to handle the primary storage for much of the data that are now available. It is also often used to analyze and massage the data to prepare them for mapping. Graphic software capabilities are required to symbolize the data for display on maps, design the page layout, and prepare the map for printing and output. There are advantages and limitations to both these types of software, if they are used exclusive of each other. In this article, we suggest that the ideal cartographic solution is to merge them in a single computing environment that leverages the advantages of both.

Advantages of a GIS-based approach to map making include: a consistent and well defined model for organization and storage of the data, seamless coverage (whereas in the past, the extent of the data was sometimes related to the extent of the map sheets covering the area of interest), multipurpose data (that can serve...

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