Wikivoyage talk:Route icons

Reproductions of Copyrighted Materials

Archived from the Pub:

So... I'd like to add some of the Canadian provincial highway shields to maps. Unfortunately, many of them are copyrighted. I'm guessing tracing one is off limits (it would be a derivative work of copyrighted material). Does anyone know how to work around this without violating the copyright. A couple of things I thought off are:

try to create one that looks the same, but do it free-hand
create one that is similar looking but leaves out certain features so it is not an exact replica

Any thoughts? (WT-en) Shaund 19:40, 10 December 2008 (EST)

Would [these] work? --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 19:56, 10 December 2008 (EST)

Unfortunately they don't help much (I actually have that page bookmarked already!). Those are the Trans-Canada signs plus two of the provinces. I've found signs I can use for about 5 or 6 of the provinces so far. The big problems are BC and Alberta. Wikipedia/Commons treats all of their highway shields as a non-free logo. It sounds like Ontario is the same, but someone created simplified versions (i.e., my second bullet point) to get around it. I'm leaning towards doing it for those shields I can't find public domain/CC versions of, but would like to see if there are any other options. (WT-en) Shaund 20:34, 10 December 2008 (EST)

Ontario shields, at least the 400-series ones, should be public domain, according to Commons. For any provincial highways whose shields aren't PD, I recommend a generic square or circle design, something like Wikipedia:Commons:Image:MA Route 2.svg or the "generic" default route markers used by some U.S. states (Wikipedia:Commons:Circle_signs). (WT-en) LtPowers 21:23, 10 December 2008 (EST)

Shaund is right, and good for bringing this up. Not so sure of BC, but Shaund knows well so I assume it is, but I guess BC has the problem AB has. Yes we have the TransCanada, Secondary/Non Special Major, and Series 400 Highways, great. But a lot of canadian highways have unique symbols that dont have similarities to others. One example of a major highway that is this is the QEII (Queen Elizabeth highway 2) in Alberta, ,. which runs from Calgary to Edmonton. There is highway two whcih uses a generic symbol on the highway outside of the leg of Edm-Cal. But that isn't such a major one, and we already have that logo. A few places still use the generic QEII symbol that was used, but that is because it only recently changed.(WT-en) edmontonenthusiast [ee] ^.T.A.L.K. 16:07, 11 December 2008 (EST).

Thanks for the comments. I took a closer look at the Ontario shields and they're OK because the copyright expired. I'll use a very generic design for those provinces whose shields are still covered by copyright. At some point, I'll try to summarize the status for all the provinces and put it up on the map making or regional map page. (WT-en) Shaund 01:42, 12 December 2008 (EST)

Editable route icons

For the purpose of mapmaking, the path-based text on the shields from commons is a real pain (since you can't just change the numbers as text). I made an SVG with the basic 4 types of shields. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to make more such SVG bases for mapmaking, and include them in this list? --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:28, 9 February 2009 (EST)

Why are all these routes uploaded as PNG? That's pretty useless when making maps. Can't we just change them into a list of SVG-templates? --(WT-en) globe-trotter 10:59, 25 January 2010 (EST)

These are meant for Project:Routebox navigation. SVG icons wouldn't work. We could have a separate list for mapmakers, but it would probably be easier just to create and use a wts:category:SVG route icons. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 13:02, 25 January 2010 (EST)

(edit conflict) They're not here for map-making purposes. (Map-makers can easily go to Commons for any route shields they need, choosing either PNG or SVG according to their preferences. There's no reason to upload them here, Peter's suggestion above aside.) These are for routebox navigation. (WT-en) LtPowers 13:04, 25 January 2010 (EST)

Commons does a hideous job of organizing them, though... They also use paths for text, which is annoying. For our purposes, it might be nice to upload SVG files with all the most important route icons for each country/region, e.g., a European file, a USA file (which I have linked above in this thread), a Canada file, etc. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 13:28, 25 January 2010 (EST)

I've not had any problems with SVG road shields from Commons. The reason they use paths is so you don't have to have a specific font installed; while I do have the fonts installed, not everyone does. (WT-en) LtPowers 17:09, 25 January 2010 (EST)

Ah allright, understood :) --(WT-en) globe-trotter 13:51, 26 January 2010 (EST)

A question on British Columbia signs

Swept in from the pub

A user has tagged some British Columbia signs as available on Commons, for example File:Bc11.png. However, the images are quite different, so if I change file names based on those tags, it would also mean that I make an editorial decision. Would it be OK with the English Wikivoyage community if I replace the tagged British Columbia PNG images with the indicated SVG images? There are several similar images which have been tagged, all changing from the File:Bc11.png style to the File:BC-11.svg style. --Stefan2 (talk) 00:44, 4 November 2012 (CET)

The new ones look better, so I wouldn't have any problem with that. --Globe-trotter (talk) 00:48, 4 November 2012 (CET)

It's my understanding that the sparse style shields were used based on copyright concerns circa 2008, but since then, the element in question (the emblem at the top) passed the 50-year mark and has definitively passed into the public domain. If WMC is okay with the new shields now, then it would be good to upgrade our images too. Please go ahead. -- D. Guillaume (talk) 00:56, 4 November 2012 (CET)

Agree with Dguillaume (I was the user who created the original sparse-style signs and did the recent tags in wts. What Dguillaume wrote above captured my thoughts well). -Shaund (talk) 01:38, 4 November 2012 (CET)

There seems to be no opposition and the original uploader supports the change, so I will proceed with replacing the British Columbia images. --Stefan2 (talk) 02:17, 4 November 2012 (CET)

In some cases, these .png's seem just to be downconverted from .svg's on wp.commons: for example Image:TCH 1.png is a rehashed Wikimedia

Image:TCH 1.svg and indicates wp.commons as its source. (For that matter, better, accurate, province-specific icons like

Image:BC-1 (TCH).svg are available on WP). There are a lot of these so it seems a bit impractical to do them all manually (they should likely be search and replaced to their original wp.commons names for the same file and the local copies flagged 'ignore' or 'delete', could a 'bot do this?) Highway markers in general will be already on wp.commons as Wikipedia usually has an individual article for each of the major highways, province by province. I'd suspect there are plenty of good wp.commons images worth stealing, actually. K7L (talk) 18:19, 4 November 2012 (CET)

If you want them replaced, you can tag them with NowCommons and I'll fix them with my bot. However, if the differences are non-trivial, I'll ask for consensus here first, as I did above about the British Columbia images. Also, the server is currently very busy, so everything is going way too slowly... --Stefan2 (talk) 19:41, 4 November 2012 (CET)

Missing icons

Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

At least the following route icons are missing (red-linked) but in use:

What should be used instead? Also at least one of the route icons currently on Commons is problematic: File:KTXHonamLine.png contains copyrighted logo (I believe it meets the Commons:Threshold of originality). In other words, it's outside the scope of Commons and should be deleted there. All KTX route icons should probably use some generic symbols... 88.148.249.186 16:34, 25 January 2013 (UTC)Reply