Show highways in adjacent regions on maps

[mapcat]

The maps that show up at the top of the Traveler Stats pages (among other places) show only the highways actually in that region.


Indiana for example


In CHM, maps were generated differently, resulting in much less functional maps, but one positive difference: they showed all highways in the region pictured and all adjacent regions.


Indiana for example


Would it be possible to generate maps here that include the same? I realize I can generate a map that displays Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois by adding additional region codes after the rg=, but then I would just have a map of those five states surrounded by even more empty ones.

[Jim]

It's because the Google overlay maps are fundamentally different from CHM's old maps.  I suppose it's possible to bring in whatever map data you zoom to or pan to, but that would completely change the way things get read in from the DB (or would require that the DB for the whole planet get read in at the start).  I don't see myself adding that functionality any time soon.  The way I see it, to get a particular region with visible portions of adjacent regions, just specify enough neighboring regions so you have what you want when you pan/zoom to the map you are aiming for.

[oscar]

Would it be possible to generate maps here that include the same? I realize I can generate a map that displays Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois by adding additional region codes after the rg=, but then I would just have a map of those five states surrounded by even more empty ones.

You can always zoom in enough to get a map focused on the jurisdiction you care about, and some of the adjacent jurisdictions. I've been doing this to crank out printed maps for my travel binder, using an image editor to snip out as much of the adjacent jurisdictions as I want, and also best fit the resulting map on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper.

I've also done that to split geographically "awkward" states like NY, with separate printouts for upstate and Long Island, and HI, with separate maps for the four counties with state highways that omit all the water between them, to show more detail than possible for statewide maps.

[mapcat]

The main reason I wanted this was that in CHM I would save a screenshot of the default map for various states and regions each year as a record in case I needed to re-enter anything. It was also useful after a trip to see if I had remembered to enter everything by comparing a map from before to a map from after the trip, flipping back and forth to see new clinches highlighted.


The current maps still function reasonably well for this, and like you said I can recreate essentially the same view by adding states and zooming in, but it was a lot easier not having to manually zoom in to exactly the same level and center the map in exactly the same place every time.


Don't get me wrong: the new maps are far superior in almost every way to the old ones. I just wanted to point out one functionality that was lacking.

[Jim]

I want to make sure you know that no offense was taken at the suggestion.  Keep 'em coming.

There was some work early on to get the CHM-style maps working and maybe someone will still pick that up.  I personally hope to continue to improve the Google Maps overlay style this summer so it might end up being more appropriate for printing, etc.  I would definitely like to find some very plain background tiles to have as an option and maybe add in route names/numbers on our overlay for those to more closely approximate the minimal style of CHM's maps.  One thing that might be possible is to create the same kinds of lists of places and rectangular regions as CHM had for selecting maps, and automatically load in the subset of data that's visible in that region and set a center and zoom level appropriately.