in reply to Monks' Maps!

Neat concept. I too will vote for text over a map. First off, a "medium sized map of the world" is pretty lousy resolution. Your "dot" would cover an area at least a hundred miles wide, probably more. Secondly, why bother with the huge bandwidth of a transparent GIF over the first? Why not generate the GIF/JPEG dynamically and place the dots via a longitude/latitude option we can all set in our user settings?

(I can imagine a dizzying array of tools coming from that. PerlMonks would be calculating the areas of highest Monkly concentration, the bar nearest the most monks, etc)

In general, having your data in text is FAR more flexible than in other formats. You can always generate an image given text data.

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RE: RE: Monks' Maps!
by AgentM (Curate) on Oct 16, 2000 at 20:45 UTC
    But who governs what is input into the text field? How would you plot an input of "Massachusetts" vs "Townsville, MA"? the only reason that i suggested the layer was that poor vroom woudln't have to deal with some messy GD routine. (If a monk changes places, every dot would need to be rewritten.) I imagine that the layer routine would simply simplify! :-) I would keep the scale to about 100 miles per dot. This number would retain maximum usefulness while maintaining anonymity. Of course, that's not for me to decide, but I feel that it would be much easier in the long run (programming, how to use the map, etc) to have a submission image map where you *click* and you're done. I don't have any idea what my current latitude nor longitude are- anyone new would be discouraged from entering anything. Something would have to check the user's input. I still find a quick click on a world map much friendlier.
    AgentM Systems or Nasca Enterprises is not responsible for the comments made by AgentM- anywhere.
[reply]
      But who governs what is input into the text field?

      We can set the info in our user settings.

      How would you plot an input of "Massachusetts" vs "Townsville, MA"?

      We wouldn't, thus the Long&Lat. (BTW, The postal service doesn't seem to think Townsville, MA exists)

      poor vroom woudln't have to deal with some messy GD routine.

      He can just give us access to the data, and we'll do all the hard work.

      I don't have any idea what my current latitude nor longitude are

      According to your usersettings and MapsOnUs.com, roughly -79.98, 40.44. Many tools exist on the web for translating ZIP or what not into coordinates. The SCA has a nifty non-USA lookup via NIMT.

      If you're worried about privacy, you can set the coords to whatever level of accuracy you desire.

      I'd say a "click" would be horribly inaccurate. On a mid sized world map, you can't distinguish Townsville from elsewhere, because you can't be sure you'll hit massachusetts.

[reply]
      You don't need the layers, though. It should be trivial to make a clickable image map, then have GD generate the dots in one image, centered at the clicked coordinates.

      --isotope
      http://www.skylab.org/~isotope/
[reply]

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