Wikivoyage:Arrivals lounge/Archives/2018/October

Maps

In light of the recent discussion on dual maps, I was hoping someone could answer some questions for me on all of the different facets of maps here.

• The map button at the top of pages: what is it? How does it differ from the map you get when clicking on a marker? Why does it take you to a separate site? That site has some interesting features, like merging markers when they're on the same building. Why don't the dynamic maps here have that? Do we not want it? If that's the case, why does that site have it?
• The {{geo}} template: what is it? I think it adds the above button, but why are the coordinates specified manually, instead of, say, Wikidata? What does zoom do?
• The {{PoiMap2detail}} template: what is it? Why are the coordinates specified manually? How does it differ from {{geo}} and the map button? If it's just another link to the same, why does it need coordinates defined again?
• {{Mapframe}}s: Is this just a window into the map you get when clicking on a marker? I've noticed it has a |staticmap= parameter. What is this intended to do, if the two maps are not supposed to coexist? Did it originally hide one or the other?
• The fullscreen map you get when clicking on a map marker: It centers on the marker you click. Is there a way to open it so that it centers on the "page" coordinates, whatever those are (i.e. just a fullscreen mapframe). I know you can do this by clicking fullscreen on a mapframe, but what if the article has no mapframe?
• Static maps: what was the process for ensuring they kept up with edits, especially edits by IPs who might not communicate their changes?
• The German WV has a different map style, where they sometimes have icons on the POIs instead of just numbers in the dynamic map. (I could have sworn they were all over the place, but I'm having a hard time finding an example now. Their Paris article at least has some train icons). Do we have that capability, and, if so, did we decide against using it?

ARR8 (talk) 16:08, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

I’ll try to answer at least some of your questions. When it comes to static maps, they are updated by hand, basically, and are not too easy to update. This has been discussed recently in the pub. Otherwise, the maps are generally based on OpenStreetMaps so your questions would be related to their functionality. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 00:46, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

There look to be two different pieces of mapping software in use; the old version (poimap2) is linked from the map button at the top of pages and the new version (mw:extension:Kartographer) is linked from the individual markers. Both use OpenStreetMap as their base map, but there are some differences in appearance - the poimap2 displayed icons (a hotel marker was shaped like a house, a train station icon like a suitcase) where Kartographer would just display nondescript circle pointers for everything. Clicking on an individual marker gives a map zoomed close in to that specific POI, while clicking on the map icon gives a map centred on the {{geo}} co-ordinates at the zoom level specified in that template. There's also an annoying Kartographer bug where the numbered icons stop at 99, 99, 99... a geographic destination page doesn't usually hit that limit, but the occasional itinerary or travel topic might.

I believe there is a poimap2 layer called "destinations" (which is 'off' by default) which shows markers for each city with an article (instead of each POI within one city); that layer uses the {{geo}} co-ordinates. The poimap2 relies on an external server; the numbers need to be in the article for that server's scripts to extract them.

I suspect that poimap2 had one limitation which Kartographer did not; it didn't allow two dynamic maps on the same page. That's a problem for articles like Trans-Canada Highway where it's desirable to break an 8050km journey into smaller sections with a mapframe for each. The {{PoiMap2detail}} template generated not an in-line map on the page, but a templated link to a map. It also appears on Adirondacks, which has a static map on-page and a templated link to a dynamic map using PoiMap2detail; special:whatlinkshere/template:PoiMap2detail finds a half-dozen or so other example pages.

The {{mapframe}} displays the same map (Kartographer) which is linked from the {{marker}}s. There's also a {{mapshape}} which attempts to import the city limits from Wikidata and grey out everything outside the line; that's awkward for some destinations (like Promontory Summit) where WV's article boundaries don't match the official city limits used by Wikipedia (for small places, our articles include suburbs and a fair chunk of surrounding countryside to have each end where the next place with an article starts, and to generate articles of reasonable length by grouping many small points together while splitting huge Manhattan-sized cities into districts).

The "staticmap=" parameter worked on the old poimap2 but is badly broken in Kartographer. For articles where we had access to both a static and dynamic map (such as Trans-Labrador Highway) {mapframe|staticmap-=...} would display the dynamic map and merely provide a clickable link to the static map. If the dynamic map couldn't be displayed (most likely, on a print/hard-copy version) the static map would automatically take its place. The switch to Kartographer broke this in such a way that the dynamic map appeared properly, but with the static map (at 1:1 scale and cropped to be the same width as the dynamic map) appeared directly under it - always. I don't believe this parameter, in its current state, to be useful.

To get a map centred on the article co-ordinates (instead of on a single marker) click the map icon at the upper-right corner of the page.

Static maps were updated rarely; only a few long-time, experienced users were doing this as it required manually editing the file off-line in Inkscape or a similar programme - see Wikivoyage:How to draw static maps. This was OK for country or other upper-level regional maps which change infrequently, but didn't work well for lower-level articles (such as individual city districts) where individual venues (restaurants, activities and attractions) come and go frequently. I'm not sure what the German version is doing; what information we have documented is in Wikivoyage:How to use dynamic maps but much of what's there was written for poimap2 and merely updated to try to address Kartographer. There used to be a Wikimedia Foundation maps team, but I think they've been disbanded and Kartographer isn't being actively improved at the moment. Handling of GPX tracks, for instance, differs between the two mapping products - in Kartographer, the {{GPX}} icon at the upper-right of the page downloads just POI's (not tracks), as the tracks are now GeoJSON. That's an issue for articles like Oregon Trail, where it might be useful to download the GPX track for the national historic trail (as designated by the National Park Service) and load it onto a GPS device before hitching the wagons and heading Donner Party-style into the sunset. K7L (talk) 15:11, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the explanation. It sounds like there's a lot of room for improvement with the current system, but also a lot of interacting parts. Follow-up questions: do the poimap2 links get much use, and, other than the "destinations" layer and trail export, and bugs with Kartographer, is there anything else that poimap2 is better at than Kartographer? (i.e. why haven't we "retired" poi2map?) ARR8 (talk) 02:06, 4 October 2018 (UTC)