User talk:Noira

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[edit] Image legend for location maps

This discussion is about an image: Image:EU location legend en.png

Hi Noira, I appreciate your adaption from the bilingual legend created by David Liuzzo, intended for his location maps. Its name suggests it's intended for his "EU location" maps only, but in fact the legend is just as useful for his "Europe location" maps (which do not show a separate shade for the European Union, thus the whole European continent is white). Also the order of shades is not quite logical and not suited for the caption text underneath the maps (in which the link to your legend occurs). Thus, could you be as kind as to modify at least the English legend for this order and 2 subtexts (but keep your colours, those hereunder are just bad imitations and my text in the coloured areas is not at all required):

  State border
 
 
  Sea border
 
 
  River
 
 
 
Mercator projection
from the North Cape
     to the Mediterranean Basin,
from Greenland
     to the Ural Mountains.
orange
Highlighted state(s)
white
European continent
(see also hereunder)
camel
European Union
(not indicated on all maps)
grey
Other continents
azure
Water areas

Kind regards. — SomeHuman 4 Mar 2007 20:07 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, these are slight adjustments and I will gladly implement them if it means this legend becomes more useful and can be used with different maps.
I agree with most of your suggested order for the colored boxes, but I would switch the location of the European Union and European Continent boxes. That way it becomes: the highlighted state in the European Union (with a text mentioning this color is not present on all maps, also removing the need for the text with the European continent box) on the European continent neighboring other continents, with water areas also shown.
Before I am able to add any text to this image though, I need to know which font was used. My previous adaptation merely included some creative copy/paste work to remove the German texts and reposition the English ones. So if you know what font was used in this image, or know anyone who does, please direct them here :) --Noira 20:31, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
I prefer the order I gave because whereever the legend is [or soon will be] linked, that caption text locates the country, first on the continent (main region), then in the European Union (subregion) [try e.g. Monaco, the Netherlands, France, Belarus...]; that cannot even be the other way around (too POV promoting the EU and only its current order leaves room for the Legend link on the last line). I don't think the precise font matters, there is no text (hence font) at any of the maps for which the legend is intended; you might as well use Arial/Helvetica or any straight-up sans-serif font; anyway, the author of the original can most quickly be reached at de:Benutzer Diskussion:David Liuzzo on the German-language Wikipedia, he accepts English comments there and replies in English as well. Thanks. — SomeHuman 4 Mar 2007 21:03 (UTC)
PS: nowadays, WP prefers image format .svg instead of .png (it does not matter all too much here because all the Liuzzo maps are .png anyway, but in case you could save it as .svg, do so. [You might check the "What links here" on the left of your .png Image page, then replace "EU location legend en.png" with "EU location legend en.svg" on those (now still few, most still have the bilingual legend) pages, or I can do that replacing, meanwhile both (former) .png and new .svg would be available anyway].
By the way, here above I changed the font specifically to Arial, 16px bold and 12px normal; if you have Arial installed, it should show on your system to come close to the original. The actual font does not appear to be one of the standard installed fonts on a Windows system; using Arial ensures that the legend is shown in a font most users see on Wikipedia texts but then you'll have to apply it elsewhere on the legend image as well. — SomeHuman 4 Mar 2007 21:15 - 5 Mar 2007 00:24 (UTC)
While I disagree on the matter that this would be POV pushing, after consideration, keeping it this way looks more sensible with the maps that don't have the EU colored. David Liuzzo isn't here till March 23th and I'm not waiting that long just for the font, I may change it altogether to a font like Arial or similar, monospaced or cleartype.
I'm aware of the desire to have svg images on WP first and foremost, however I am currently not in a position to create images of this format. In the near future I might pursue a program which is capable of this and convert the legend from it's current png format. On the count of replacing links, I think I'll be doing that anyway cause I might rename the image to indicate it is usable with both David's Europe maps styles.
A preliminary revision will be up soon, thanks again for your input :) --Noira 14:30, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Good idea to rename the legend. Because the 'Europe location XXX.png' maps never show the shaded EU, while this legend can only be used for Europe, I suggest 'European location legend en.png'. Apart from the 'standard' being .svg, I don't see how a .png would be a disadvantage: its current usage simply links to the image page itself, thus the image is not resized. My remark about POV-pushing was related to what made you go along with my order: it's rather pushy to put the EU before the continent especially for a country that is no EU member. For a member it were different in case the caption text would put the country (smallest) in the EU (larger) and then on the continent (largest), a logical order by itself. But without that order in the caption text, I think the current order is more proper. The text notes the continent first because that part should better be indentical for EU an non-EU countries, and because such is the major 'location reference', the location in the EU is of secondary relevance to situate a country geographically. I'll stop rattling on now. Thanks for your efforts! — SomeHuman 5 Mar 2007 16:52 (UTC)
A preliminary revision can now be found at Image:European and EU location legend.png, apart from the changes you suggested I made some minor other adjustments. Main thing being I removed the overall 'blur' which was present on the original bilingual version of the legend due to anti-aliasing as in my opinion the way it is now -- way sharper -- is easier on the eyes.
Let me know what you think! --Noira 20:33, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Looks nice, though I still see some blur and the smaller text is far too small; I also prefer the smaller text underneath the legend for the European continent to actually occur. The Mercator projection etc... text is not as nicely filled a rectangle block as Liuzzo's; though I had been thinking about that text, that 'Southern Mediterranean Coast' appeared a bit awkward. I found a perfect (I think) alternative for the southern delimiter of the map of Europe as Liuzzo created it: the Mediterranean Basin. Also it seems we normally think from East to West and from North to South, thus North Cape and Mediterranean could better be switched. I needed to know what it could look like and tried it out myself. I'm feeling a bit unpleasant about it, but as I was trying, I found I could easily create the whole image in html. See the whole legend that above replaced the original right side. I made a few modifications to the outer borders and lessened the total width by a notch, the distance between the lines & texts is now equal to that between the rectangles & texts. To me it looks better balanced, and its smaller width might even allow to paste it into some map(s). I also kept the small names of the colours, to allow users to refer to those by a same name: these are shorter and just as accurate than the ones ('deep orange', 'light orange') that had been used in the map captions for the countries' articles so far (and as these normally come from a template, it is easy to modify those. I uploaded it (my first image upload) to Wikipedia Commons (where the original Liuzzo legend occurs): [1] by the name I had suggested (because 'European' matches usage for European Union and other European countries, for the latter best without needing to mention the EU in the name) Image:European location legend en.png Hope you do not mind too much, I'm really sorry to have made your efforts rather superfluous: I hadn't thought I could do this myself. Kind regards. — SomeHuman 7 Mar 2007 04:37 (UTC)