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Cartography for Swiss Higher Education

Solutions for LBS maps >> Portrayal >>

1.1.1.

The International Organization for Standardization defines portrayal as "presentation of information for humans" (Anonymous). The vagueness of this definition is representative of the abstractness of the concept in general. In that standard the main concern is to define methods for styling geographic features. However it notes that, ``Portrayal shall not be limited to visual rendering, but may include audio, tactile and other media'' (p.9), In this sense, portrayal of geographic information can also be seen as being concerned with a number of other techniques for presenting information that exploit one or more properties of a map to enhance its abilities for communication in particular circumstances. These properties include:

  1. The level of detail used to describe features at different scales
  2. The geometry of the map, for example the map projection
  3. How topological relationships amongst features are presented
  4. The media of the map (e.g. visual, audio, and tactile)

In the next units each of how each of these aspects can be exploited to alleviate the constraints imposed by mobile device clients will be described and techniques to perform the portrayal operations dynamically explained.



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