[RNLD] Creating linguistic maps

[Tom Honeyman]

A source that may be interesting to some people on the list with a pacific focus is the shapefile here:

http://ecai.org/austronesiaweb/PacificMaps.htm

or more specifically here:

http://ecai.org/austronesiaweb/Maps/languagemap_040429/languagemap_040429.zip

I believe it is a vectorisation of the Wurm and Hattori maps. It is a little messy aligning language names to polygons, so it’s a good idea to have the maps, or scans of the maps to consult. But if you’re just after polygons then it would be okay.

I’ve put TileMill on my todo list now (thanks Doug!), but I have successfully used the open source QGIS to make print-ready maps in the past. A simple workflow that worked for simple maps for me was to sketch the map in google earth and then load it in QGIS to make the print ready version.

QGIS also allows you to connect to open map servers and lots of other public data from within the program. But it is not of the faint of heart - its a proper GIS platform.

http://www.qgis.org/en/site/

Having said that, TileMill looks pretty awesome, and much easier. If you have dabbled with ArcGIS in the past and not run away in horror (but then can’t afford a license either), then have a look at QGIS.

-tom

On 23 Sep 2014, at 7:26 pm, Hiram Ring <hiram1 at e.ntu.edu.sg> wrote:

> Thanks Doug, Margaret, and Aidan!
> 
>  I'm playing around with TileMill right now, and it looks quite good. I've managed to find some free shapeforms of world political boundaries at the country and state level, and layer them with different colors to set them apart. If you have any PDFs of courses or know of good tutorials for linguists, they'd be much appreciated.
> 
> Best,
> Hiram
> 
> 
> On Sep 23, 2014, at 3:32 PM, Aidan Wilson wrote:
> 
>> +1 for tilemill, however a caution that the learning curve can be steep. 
>> 
>> At Melbourne University last year there were a couple of tilemill course for staff and students. The linguistics contingent was impressive. Layer data for various political boundaries can be found from a variety of online sources, and you can even create polygons in something like Google Earth or Google Maps and export them in a form that tilemill can import.
>> 
>> The visual customisation is through cartoCSS, which is a specific cartographic implementation of CSS (as the name might suggest). The documentation of tilemill is also quite good and the online community of users is large enough that you should be able to solicit help for various aspects of the program.
>> 
>> --
>> Aidan Wilson
>> 
>> School of Languages and Linguistics
>> aidan.wilson at unimelb.edu.au
>> 0428 458 969
>> 
>> On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 1:29 PM, Doug Marmion <doug.marmion at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I’ve found TileMill be good for this kind of purpose, as well as easy to use.
>> 
>> https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/
>> 
>> 
>> cheers,
>> doug
>> 
>> 
>> On 23 Sep 2014, at 13:19, Hiram Ring <hiram1 at e.ntu.edu.sg> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi folks,
>>> 
>>> This may have been asked previously, but I'm trying to create a new map to illustrate rough language boundaries, and I'm having difficulty finding a simple way to do so. I know R has various options and can get geo-data from GIS, but that seems like a steep learning curve. Google mapmaker and other online services that I have found do not provide enough visualization options (you get roads or satellite data, but no district boundaries in India, for example, and can't fill or highlight areas).
>>> 
>>> Can anyone recommend some options for creating linguistic maps?
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> Hiram
>>> _______________
>>> Hiram Ring
>>> PhD Student, Grammatical Description and Documentation
>>> Nanyang Technological University
>>> http://linguistics.hss.ntu.edu.sg
>> 
>> 
> 

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