Editing Help:Producing maps with xplanet

{{About|the GIS software xplanet|help with the interactive maps feature|mw:Help:Extension:Kartographer}}
{{Wikipedia how to|sort-by=Xplanet, Producing maps with}}

'''Producing maps with xplanet''' is a [[wikipedia]] tutorial showing how to use [[xplanet]] as a piece of [[geographic information system|GIS]] kit, to make map images suitable for use on wikipedia and other such websites.  By the end of the tutorial, you should be able to quickly and accurately produce maps of any region suitable for publication.

==Getting [[xplanet]]==

See the [http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/ project page] for downloads

==Getting started==

Typical command-line use of xplanet (this all goes on one line)

 xplanet.exe 
  -projection orthographic 
  -config script.txt 
  -latitude 52.25 
  -longitude 21.00 
  -num_times 1 
  -geometry 600x600 
  -output xplanet_image.jpeg
  -radius 70 
  -fontsize 16

Result:

[[Image:Xplanet_europe_ortho.jpg|200px]]

== Script files==

Some of the map data is typically stored in a script file (a text file on your computer) - the script I used for the above map was simply:

 [earth]
 grid=true
 grid1=10
 grid2=10
 shade=100

shade=100 is important, because it says that nighttime regions should be shaded at 100% of daytime illumination.  When drawing maps, the nighttime shading isn't normally needed, so set that to 100 to turn it off

<table>
<tr><td>Projection</td>
<td> 
[[Ancient projection|ancient]]
[[Azimuthal projection|azimuthal]]
[[Hemispherical projection|hemisphere]]
[[Lambert projection|lambert]]
[[Mercator projection|mercator]]
[[Mollweide projection|mollweide]]
[[Peters projection|peters]]
''[[Orthographic projection|orthographic]]''
[[Plate carre projection|rectangular]]
</td></tr>

<tr><td>config</td>
<td>data script
</td></tr>

<tr><td>latitude, longitude</td>
<td>where to centre an orthographic projection
</td></tr>

<tr><td>num_times</td>
<td>must be 1 (stop xplanet running continuously)
</td></tr>

<tr><td>geometry</td>
<td>width and height of the desired image
</td></tr>

<tr><td>output</td>
<td>where to save the image
</td></tr>

<tr><td>radius</td>
<td>radius of the earth, as a percentage of image width (make this bigger to zoom in)
</td></tr>

<tr><td>more...</td>
<td>try the docs [http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/README.config here] and [http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/README here] 
</td></tr>
</table>


Try it again, setting the latitude to 90, shows the north polar area

[[Image:xplanet_polar_ortho.jpg|200px]]

==How to produce "globe images of earth showing where a region is located==

==How generally to zoom in and project an image suitable for use as a map, and save as jpeg==

==How to plot locations on the map with labels==

City locations are available for download - see xplanet site, and can be plotted on maps (as can anything you can generate a lat/long/name textfile for)

==How to draw country-borders using the arcfile list==

See the URL below for some examples

[http://thomas-wehr.homeip.net/weather/europawetter.php Xplanet sample output: with markerfiles produced with weather scripts]

[http://thomas-wehr.homeip.net/space/iss-position.php Xplanet sample output: following the International Spacestation ISS around the earth showing various information like volcanos, quakes. Using satellites as targets.]

[http://thomas-wehr.homeip.net/weather/hurricane.php Xplanet sample output: hurricane information using arcfile options. Storm data collected by scripts.]

==Drawing on maps tutorial==  
plot significant points, then use them as template in GIMP?

== Misc ==
[[Image:xplanet_peters.jpg|thumb|300px|Typical image using the [[Peters projection]]]]

== See also ==
*http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/XPlanet_notes