Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps/Conventions/Location maps

This page provide conventions for the creation of location maps.
Location maps are an extremely light and chartjunk-free style, use especially in geolocalisation infobox ({{Location map}}). Location maps focus on the subject, most of the time a country, and its official borders and subdivisions borders. This style is on purpose using soft and print-friendly colors, to ease the superimposition of labels or dots, as well as non-CIA based colors.

Usage: These maps are often use as background for png locator maps to enlight the place and area of a major sub-division's in a country, of an species range, etc. They may also be use as background for Exchanges maps, or as an administrative layer up on Topographic maps by keeping the borders only.

Where: these maps can be found on commons, in the category Location_maps_(2008_standard).

Convention

Convention for location maps.

Subject	Colorimetry (RGB/hex)
Toponymes (names)	#000000 R:0 G:0 B:0
Border. Labels (country/state/province's name)	#646464 R:100 G:100 B:100
Subject's area (country, province)	#FEFEE9 R:254 G:254 B:233
Other areas part of the same political unity	#F6E1B9 R:246 G:225 B:185
Outside area	#E0E0E0 R:224 G:224 B:224
Coasts of lakes, rivers, seas, and hydronyms (Temporary coastlines, color and ratio: opacity:0.6;dasharray:4, 4;stroke-width:1;)	#0978AB R:9 G:120 B:171
Ocean, sea, lake (Temporary body, color and ratio: opacity:0.6;stroke-dasharray:4, 4;stroke-width:1;)	#C6ECFF R:198 G:236 B:255
Naming (upload): File:{Country name in English} location map.svg File:{Country name in English} {Sub-division name in English} location map.svg and so on, but please focus your energy on countries first.
Further needs: Legend: not need. Scale: not need (since misleading), acceptable for <200km large/high maps. Projections: Equirectangular projection (except for extreme north or extreme south coutry.) {Location map}: use such {{Location map|Spain|label=Madrid|mark=Green_pog.svg|lat=40.5|long=-3.7|width=230|float=center}}
SVG template: if you need some labels, please use Image:Maps_template-en.svg which provide further label conventions.

Motivations

This location maps focusing on a subject being the basis of map making on wikipedia, a special attention is need for this set, to make it respect a chosen style.

Moreover, this maps are widely use with the {{Superimpose}} and {{Location map}} template, to notice the coordinates of a city, building, battle, etc. , accordingly, they are use in the infobox of many such articles, contributing to the harmonisation of the infoboxes look.

History and current work

History

This convention take its source in the CIA-style from the Public Domain CIA World Factbook's maps previously uploaded on wikipedia, but have evolved toward a web-friendly, screen friendly, and wiki-specific style. User:STyx (fr) made the first basic proposal. Dozens specific talks on several wikipedias have eventually lead to this current style, with User:Sting (fr), NNW (de) & co helping a lot to spread the decided conventions by producing a large number of such maps.

Interesting innovations

Traditionally borders, especially international ones, are represented by bold lines, while neighbor countries' territories may suddenly be whitened on the map. Following a talk, a consensus encouraged to rather use doted lines for borders such —–—–— or ––– (ex: Portugal_administrative_map-fr.svg), the rational being that borders are not walls, people always crossed them, and as an NGO and international community of volunteers, we have not to support such national view that space stop at the country's border. Also, as a second consensus, the neigbor countries or territories should NOT be “wiped off the map”, that's considered as rude, and don't make sense geographically.

Leading place

Currently, the German team initiate a large project (Europa done at 96%, etc.), and work continent after continent and country after country, to provide a complete set of SVG location maps, respecting this conventions. NNW, Chumwa, Sting being the main contributors, several german and non-german users also contribute actively. Further help is welcome !

Examples

Examples

Madrid Madrid (Spain) Map with rigorous up-to-date example of this style. > Madrid

An other one, displaying a region (yellow), and other region of the same country (orange), and other countries (grey).

German SVG Template to ease such map creation.

Basic usages

• 
  1st: Portugal_location_map.svg
• 
  2nd: Portugal administrative map-fr.svg , derivate from Location map, expansion, annotations, dashed border. No color change since all Portugal is the subject, and Spain is not the same entity.
• 
  3rd: other example of labelled Location map
• 
  4th: France_location_map.svg