CartoGrammar

CartoGrammar的主要目的是提供易于使用（和可重用）的工具，用于生成和显示定制的自定义图。其目标是通过构建现有技术，提供一套工具，使制图输出的生成、展示、可见性和长期管理变得容易实现。作为社会科学家的可视化和分析工具，地图具有广泛的吸引力和广泛的适用性。它们本身就有内在的价值，正如对更有效的替代算法的追求所证明的那样。几十年来，他们一直是人文地理学家的中流砥柱（Tobler 2004）。然而，它们在广泛的社会科学学科中的应用仍未得到充分利用，它们可能被视为晦涩难懂的、“仅供地理学家使用”的工具。这是不幸的，而且有些矛盾，因为它们越来越受到主流的欢迎，例如，它们在国家新闻报道中的使用，以及在各种比较和分析广泛吸引力的地图集和流行网站（如worldmapper.org）的制作中可以看到，部分原因是制图的计算成本仍然很高，而且用于制作它们的可用软件工具在功能和操作环境中既不为人所知，也不标准化。所有这一切共同阻碍了社会科学学科的广泛采用（以及更广泛的社会接受），尽管如上所述，这些类型的可视化正变得越来越流行，例如监护人2010年选举结果互动地图[http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/interactive/2010/apr/05/general-election-map-swingometer]]或政府赞助的数据可视化网站[http://www.improving-visualisation.org/]]。它们是相关的。Tobler（2004）对过去35年来制图的创建和使用的发展进行了有益的总结，包括早期对制图开发和生产的“下一波”的参考，如Gastner-Newman的“密度均衡”算法，该算法将在本文提出的服务中部署。总之，我们将构建：*一个简单，易于使用的web服务和API，用于生产用户生成的定制自定义地图；*建立一个网站，利用该API为用户生成的地图提供制作、储存和管理机制；*后端计算和存储容量将消除制图制作的障碍，并允许它们的持久性和社区共享；*一个“剪切和粘贴”风格的Javascript小部件，新手可以很容易地部署，以提供自定义制图生成设施到任何网站*一个跨学科的社会科学社区的制图用户和倡导者。

The primary purpose of CartoGrammar is to provide readily usable (and reusable) tools for the generation and showcasing of bespoke custom cartograms. The aim is to deliver, by building on prior-art, a suite of tools that will make the generation, showcasing, visibility and long term curation of cartogram outputs readily achievable. Cartograms have broad appeal and wide applicability as both a visualistaion and an analytical tool for social scientists. They have intrinsic merit in their own right as the pursuit of alternative, more efficient algorithms testify. They have been a mainstay of human geographers for several decades (Tobler 2004). Yet their adoption across the broad range of social science disciplines remains under-exploited and they can be perceived as arcane and a 'geographers only' tool. This is unfortunate and somewhat paradoxical given their increasing mainstream popularity e.g. witnessed by their use in national press coverage and in the production of various comparative and analytical broad appeal Atlases and popular websites such as worldmapper.org.In part this is because cartograms remain computationally expensive to create and that the available software tools for their production are neither well known, standardised in a functionality nor in operating environment. All of this conspires to act as a barrier to wider adoption across a range of social science disciplines (and societal acceptance more broadly - although as noted, these types of visualisations are becoming increasingly popular - see for example the Guardians 2010 election results interactive cartogram [http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/interactive/2010/apr/05/general-election-map-swingometer] or the governmner sponsored dataviz site [http://www.improving-visualisation.org/] ), to which they have relevance.Tobler (2004), provides a useful summary of the developments in the creation and use of cartograms over the last thirty-five years, including an early reference to the 'next wave' in the development and production of cartograms such as the Gastner-Newman 'density equalising' algortihm which will be deployed in the service proposed here.in summary, we will build:* a simple, easy to use web service and API for the production of user generated bespoke custom cartograms;* a web site which will exploit that API to provide a mechanism for the production, storage and curation of user generated cartograms;* a backend compute and storage capacity that will remove the barriers to cartogram production and allow for their persistence and community sharing;* a 'cut & paste' style Javascript widget that novices can readily deploy to provide the custom cartogram generation facility into any web site* a cross-discipline social science community of cartogram users and advocates.