Type and Type Placement

Objectives:

1. UW "Day of Reflection": some notes.
2. Type styles (fonts)
3. Type Placement

Maps do not speak completely through graphics. A well-designed map must be explained through text. The TITLE is a primary component, and other legends are required. The art of type design is undergoing a Renaissance with the advent of laser printers and Postscript fonts.

Basics of written text

- a complex form of symbol

World languages have evolved distinctive solutions to written text

Idiographic - character system(s) whole words (logographic)

• Chinese, Japanese "Kanji"

• Consequence for cartography: place names are SHORT, placement is easy

Syllabaries - consonant plus vowel, including alphabetic-syllable systems

• Minoan Linear B.
• Japanese Katakana, Hiragana,
• Korean Hangul (an alphabet, packaged as syllables)
• Runes (Norse, even turkic)
• India (many alphabetic-syllable systems): Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Gujarati, Bengali, ...

Alphabets

• Greek (ancient and modern),
• Cyrillic.
• Arabic (background), note letters change form by position
• Hebrew (ancient and modern)
• "Latin" (Roman?) covers a LOT of the rest of languages with special cases for diacritical marks

• Consequences for cartographers: no font covers ALL diacritical marks...

Letter forms (styles) for Latin/Roman type faces

Taken from Roman monuments (stone carvings), medieval manuscripts (pen, brush), many redesigns, many many choices... One organization of alternatives. Font sytles are patented and jealously guarded.

• Serif
  • Old style, e.g. Garamond or Palatino
  • "New" (modern) style, e.g. Times New Roman (boring!) "modern times" or Bodoni.
• Sanserif (Gothic): type of the future, 50 years ago... e.g. Helvetica or "swiss"
• Script
• Display (and other tricks "dingbats")

Type faces usually have unequal spacing for letters, but typewriters (and some old computer devices) were monospaced.

Type Placement

Now that you have selected how to write the text, where does it go? Maps are NOT a linear medium following textual rules...

Can you read the first sentence of the map?

Rules for text placement: (for western left-to-right languages?)

Order of preference:

1. upper left
2. lower left
3. upper right
4. lower right

Aligned horizontal text, versus line-following sinuous text (along rivers?)

Limitations, difficulties to overcome:

• overlapping text, clutter
• graphic hierarchy
• picking text size to be legible AND show all the objects... (switch to an active model where user requests specific names, detailed attributes?)

Automated Text Placement

attempts to remove the tedious work

A VERY complex issue to avoid overlap: a tough graph problem (challenging mathematics)

one solution: simulated annealing (French example)