Where do I get the appropriate data to draw a good
political map of the world and each continent?
This may seem somewhat off topic (at first), but these two
groups are heavily user presentation oriented, so please bear
with my oblique query... I have a potential project coming
up, with an initial meeting in a few days. The basic project is
to have a world map, click over any continent any you get
an image map for that continent. Now move the mouse over
any country and you get some stats for that country (or click to
get the stats) like the number of widgets the country produces
and the average shoe size of its citizens.
Every part of this is straightforward for me except the image
maps. My problem is getting the maps. These are really barebones
maps we're talking about (no cities or roads needed, not even
country names), but they should look nice and precise. Of
course any existing maps are already copyrighted my potential
clients will want ownership of the maps. So where do I look
for a simple but good quality political map for the web?
FURTHERMORE, country colors should somehow reflect on
the number of widgets produced. Occasionally (infrequently)
the widget counts will change and they'll have an entry method
for that, but now the country colors should change (on an
automated basis). To me this means that what I'm really after
is some specification for the coordinates of the outlines of countries,
and on the server side I'll have to create new maps whenever
widget counts are changed. So, though this part is well out
of newsgroup scope, I'll get PHP to do that (which I don't
have a problem with). The point is that the maps will be
static but need to be regenerated occasionally for coloration.
So, my real question is: Where do I get the appropriate data
to draw a good political map of the world and each continent?
I've searched the web and probably don't know the right
words (map server is not what I'm really looking for, I think,
since I'll only be serving static pages). Also, I'm open to
other architectural comments on this possible project.
Thanks,
Csaba Gabor
political map of the world and each continent?
This may seem somewhat off topic (at first), but these two
groups are heavily user presentation oriented, so please bear
with my oblique query... I have a potential project coming
up, with an initial meeting in a few days. The basic project is
to have a world map, click over any continent any you get
an image map for that continent. Now move the mouse over
any country and you get some stats for that country (or click to
get the stats) like the number of widgets the country produces
and the average shoe size of its citizens.
Every part of this is straightforward for me except the image
maps. My problem is getting the maps. These are really barebones
maps we're talking about (no cities or roads needed, not even
country names), but they should look nice and precise. Of
course any existing maps are already copyrighted my potential
clients will want ownership of the maps. So where do I look
for a simple but good quality political map for the web?
FURTHERMORE, country colors should somehow reflect on
the number of widgets produced. Occasionally (infrequently)
the widget counts will change and they'll have an entry method
for that, but now the country colors should change (on an
automated basis). To me this means that what I'm really after
is some specification for the coordinates of the outlines of countries,
and on the server side I'll have to create new maps whenever
widget counts are changed. So, though this part is well out
of newsgroup scope, I'll get PHP to do that (which I don't
have a problem with). The point is that the maps will be
static but need to be regenerated occasionally for coloration.
So, my real question is: Where do I get the appropriate data
to draw a good political map of the world and each continent?
I've searched the web and probably don't know the right
words (map server is not what I'm really looking for, I think,
since I'll only be serving static pages). Also, I'm open to
other architectural comments on this possible project.
Thanks,
Csaba Gabor
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