Cartographica-Output

Producing Output

Cartographica has support for a wide variety of output formats, from printed maps to HTML and many different kinds of data files and image files.

Printed Output

Cartographica has two ways to create printed output: Quick Printing and Map Layout printing.

Quick Printing is the easiest way to print a basic map. By using the Print... item from the File menu with a Map Window in front, Cartographica will print a copy of the map that is represented in the window in as large a format as possible for whatever output you are using. The larger the print area, the more well-defined the printout.

Map Layout

Cartographica has a second file format for creating maps intended for production output. The Map Layout document can refer to any Cartographica Mapset file (or combination of files) and can contain maps, titling, scales, and legends. Map Layout documents contain a single page based on the Print Setup that you set when creating or editing the Map Layout file. Cartographica supports scaling the view of the Map Layout so that it can be seen both in detail (zoomed in) and as an overview for large printouts (zoomed out).

Most control for the Map Layout is handled through contextual menus, otherwise known as right-clicks or Control-clicks. Control-clicking in most areas of the Map Layout will show a menu which will then provide you with options for editing the information.

Example Map Layout Window

Map Layout Tasks

To move items in the Map Layout, click once on the item to select it (you should see "handles" in each of the corners and along the edges), and then drag the item to its desired location
To resize items in the Map Layout, click once on the item to select it and then drag one of the handles to change the size of the item.
To add a new Map to the Map Layout, just drag a Cartographica Map Set file into the Map Layout. For ease of working with already-open files, you can drag any open Map Set by dragging the file icon in the Map Window's title bar. Usually, this requires holding the mouse button down long enough for the file icon to darken, showing that it is selected.
To add a new Scale to the Map Layout, click once on the target Map item in the layout to select it and then right-click (or control-click) in the Map Layout to get the contextual menu. From here, select Add Scale and the Scale item will be inserted at the point you clicked.
To add a new Legend to the Map Layout, click once on the target Map item in the layout to select it and then right-click (or control-click) in the Map Layout to get the contextual menu. From here, select Add Legend and the Legend item will be inserted at the point you clicked.
To change the fonts used in Scale, Legend, and Text items, select the item and then use the Macintosh Font Panel (available from the Edit menu) to change the text information.
Cartographica Maps that are embedded in a Map Layout can be zoomed and panned independently. By double-clicking on them, you will have access to the zooming and panning controls (both through the menus and the scroll wheel on your mouse, if you have one).

Notes about Map Layout

Map Layout items associated with a given Map will show an indicator in the lower-left-hand corner of the item in order to represent the connection between these items. Thus, if you click on a Scale for a Map that also has a Legend, all three items will be "badged" as being related to each other.

Some Map Layout items have yellow warning triangles when there is something wrong with the visual presentation. For example, Legends may have this indicator when there isn't enough room in the item to show the entire legend. To fix this, either remove items from the legend, change the font, or resize the legend box.

Producing Web Maps

One unique feature of Cartographica is the ability to create a clickable web map from geospatial data. By using the layers of the map to create a web-compatible image file and then using the data in the data table, it can make each clickable area correspond to a link on the site or on another site. It can also provide roll-over text.

Creating a web map is as easy as loading your data into Cartographica and selecting Export Web Map… from the File menu. You will be prompted to provide the following information:

Selection Layer: The layer which is used to bound the selections. This will be a polygon layer
URL Column: The column that contains the URL (if any) that should be the target of the link
Label Column: The column that contains the label to be used for the target of the link
File Format: The type of image file (JPEG, GIF, TIFF, or PNG) to create for the map
With and Height: The dimensions of the map to be produced
Quality (JPEG Only): Since JPEG is a lossy compression algorithm, the Quality slider allows you to choose how much quality should be in the output image

After you are satisfied with the information, click on Export… and two files will be created for you: the image file and the HTML file. The HTML file contains the geometric information and the links which serve as the basis for a web page that will contain the map.