User talk:(WT-en) TrekkerDMS

For older comments, see User talk:(WT-en) TrekkerDMS/Archive.

---

Hello TrekkerDMS!

Welcome to Wikivoyage. Please take a sec to look at our copyleft and policies and guidelines, but feel free to plunge forward and edit some pages. Scanning the Manual of style, especially the article templates, can give you a good idea of how we like articles formatted. If you need help, check out Project:Help, and if you need some info not on there, post a message in the travellers' pub. --(WT-en) Huttite 16:42, 4 Jan 2006 (EST)

Manual of style

Please check out Project:Attraction listings and Project:Accommodation listings. The web link for an item comes last after the address and phone number. Thanks. -- (WT-en) Colin 18:48, 23 Jan 2006 (EST)

User talk pages

Hello! Just a minor point about talk pages, it's generally considered proper etiquette to archive old discussions by moving them to a page such as User talk:(WT-en) TrekkerDMS/Archive, rather than simply deleting them. That way the author of the original comment will know that you have at least read their comment, and in the future others are less likely to raise similar concerns. Of course, it's your page so you're welcome to do whatever you like, but some new users are often unaware of how others expect things to work around here. -- (WT-en) Ryan 16:24, 7 March 2006 (EST)

Thanks for creating the archive page. It's entirely up to you how you manage your pages, but there is sort of a tradition that discussions are always kept around - the Project:Using talk pages should probably be updated to reflect that fact...

By the way, thanks for all of the great photos and contributions. Our coverage of New England is surprisingly slim (outside of Boston that is) so it's great to see some new stuff being added. -- (WT-en) Ryan 18:21, 8 March 2006 (EST)

LNT

The reason you didn't know that there was an article about leave-no-trace camping is because there wasn't one until a few days ago. After I wrote it, I searched the wiki for references to LNT and linked them to it. Just trying to draw attention to my work :) - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 13:28, 25 March 2006 (EST)

Isle Royale map

I started by capturing a satellite image of the island, and used Adobe Illustrator's Live Trace function to approximate the shoreline. (Inkscape has a trace feature too, but I've never used it.) I had to play around a bit with the settings to get something that got the shape right, and then simplified it to two colors. I ended up having to do a lot of smoothing and tweaking (such as reconnecting peninsulas to the mainland or separating inland lakes), so it might have been easier to trace it by hand (which is what I'm doing for my map of Sleeping Bear Dunes... which is also a simpler shoreline). As it is, most of the little details, such as the curvature of a small peninsula or inlet, were made up by Illustrator trying to interpret and simplify a pixelated satellite image. But I figure if some hiker really needs to know the geography, they'll get a professionally-made map.

From there it was mostly a matter of drawing the trails in (using a couple maps as reference and taking care not to try to be too detailed), adding symbols and labels, etc. I put each major kind of element (e.g. the land, the trails, campsites, geographic labels) on its own layer to make it easier to manage them. I did all the work in Illustrator, then exported to SVG (which flattens everythign to one layer). I used Photoshop to import the Illustrator file, then scale it, crop it, and export it to PNG. (GIMP could've done the same with the SVG file.) Hope this helps. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 11:22, 6 April 2006 (EDT)

Could you guys copy this discussion to Project:How to draw a map, since it would be useful information for others who want to create a map? We really do need more good maps on the site, so any additional information that can be made available to people on how to create them is really helpful. Thanks! -- (WT-en) Ryan 11:34, 6 April 2006 (EDT)

Done. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 12:03, 6 April 2006 (EDT)

Thanks! It's great info. -- (WT-en) Ryan 12:05, 6 April 2006 (EDT)