User:Erp/Sandbox How to make maps

Making the Girl Scout council maps or something similar is relatively easy. These are SVG maps so are readable in text reader such as emacs or wordpad or whatever. They can also be edited but note that any files saved should be in plain text not formatted.

For tools, I used Inkscape and emacs.

Inkscape is a vector graphics editor (aka edits SVG files) available at http://www.inkscape.org/ for both macos and windows (unofficial versions exist for several varieties of linux).

Emacs is a word processor but you can use other word processors just as long as you save as plain text. I would recommend using one you are familiar with.

Next don't create the maps from scratch instead use the County maps for the US states that already exist (See Commons:United States county locator maps for how). The easiest way to find them is to go to the article "List of Counties in X" where X is the state. Scroll down till you get the list of individual counties and you'll find a map of the state with that particular state marked in red (the reason for using this rather than the map with all the county names is that it is easier to remove one red county then remove all the names). Download the SVG file for the map to your computer. There is one exception to this, Massachusetts, because Massachusetts depends more on townships than counties. See for the Massachusetts township map.