Talk:Computer cartography

I don't like this entry. Immediately it locks 'digital mapping' into being about road maps, and there seems to be a leaning toward it being to do with mum-and-dad vehicle gps technology. That is a very narrow view of digital mapping, although I suppose the only view that the general public has - unless they occasionally glimpse colourful digital maps when watching Discovery Channel or something like that on TV. Actually digital mapping is a revolution across the geospatial sciences over the last 20-30 years. Soils, vegetation, climate, geology, biology - you name it, digital mapping has been a tremendous advance. There's only 2 or 3 lines in this entry about all these scientific applications. Ok so what to do about getting this Wikipedia entry better? Take a knife to what is here? Or back off, ignorance is bliss, just let it just be about the stuff you see down at your local consumer electronics store? Stringybark (talk) 00:02, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

This article is in dramatic need of revision. It contains factual errors, grammatical errors, advertising, and does not cover the subject beyond being a high level view of an in-car GPS system. No mention of the OpenStreets mapping project, no mention of the work being done by the British Ordnance Survey (among many other mapping agencies worldwide, I'm from the UK so know more about the OS than others).

Steve the Wretch 06:50, 27 July 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stevethewretch (talk • contribs)

Change Page name to "Computer Cartography"
The term "digital mapping" is an odd choice in my professional opinion. "Mapping" is a verb that is not exclusive to cartographic maps, which is what this article is about. "Cartography" is the study and process of making maps. The two sources in the lead (I am the one who added them) are some of the oldest text books you can find on the topic, and both use the word "cartography" rather then "mapping." The first paper on using computers to help create maps is titled "automation and cartography," again showing the preference for word choice. When looking at the term "Digital mapping" on google scholar, most papers with it in the title are followed with the word "of," such as "Digital mapping of soil carbon fractions with machine learning". The overall concept of "mapping" in this case falls under applied cartography.

This article needs substantial work, and I hope to take on flushing it out, and have been thinking about this page for a few months. The use of "digital mapping" is a large discrepancy with the literature. Ultimately, all of this is a subset of the main topic of "cartography," as stated in "Cartography and the others – aspects of a complicated relationship" when it says: ""Digital cartography” and “computer cartography” were new names for the discipline in the hope this will silence voices claiming that cartography becomes irrelevant. Even a new paradigm called “cybercartography” was introduced by Taylor and Lauriault (Citation2005). All this seems unnecessary when we accept that every discipline has to adapt to new developments and evolves naturally. It is still cartography!" This is important, as the terms employed both emphasize "cartography"

For a Wikipedia article, a separate page from cartography is definitely necessary, however, I think the page title should relate the two together.

With this in mind, I will move the page based on the Moving a page reason "The title does not follow Wikipedia's naming conventions, such as that it is not the common name of the subject or it is overprecise" based on the term "digital mapping" being an over precise verb for conducting "computer cartography." If you have a strong counter point based in literature for the term "Digital mapping," rather then "computer cartography" please discuss here. GeogSage ( ⚔Chat?⚔ ) 18:57, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Mention items left behind when moving to digital
Mention things lost when moving away from paper. E.g., house number grid ticks. Jidanni (talk) 13:03, 6 December 2023 (UTC)


 * What do you mean? Street addresses are as simple as including an annotated label for each point that is dynamic with the level of scale shown on the screen. Grid ticks are a relic of old ways of designing cities. While soldiers used to march in columns because it was easier to manage, they now can work in dynamic formations and individual squads. While cities used to be grids, we can now easily plan a city with more organic winding roads that match the landscape and facilitate privacy/minimize noise. GeogSage  ( ⚔Chat?⚔ ) 18:57, 6 December 2023 (UTC)