On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Mizter T wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, asdf wrote:

Plus has Sudbury Hill Harrow looks like it loses it's 'limited
service' station symbol simply because it's incompatible with the
'interchange station' symbol.

Odd. This happens at some stations (Wimbledon) but not others
(Stratford)...

Odd indeed.

snip

Really, they need a visual code in which these properties are shown by
orthogonal, composable features: if interchangeness was just blackness,
that would work. It would look horrible, though.

Also, they show normal stations on tube and rail lines differently, which
is bad.

A thorough analysis! The link below takes you to a now well out-of-date
site on the lack of consistancy on the Tube map, of which most of the
issues have now been addressesed. It does show that 'great minds' have
visited the issue of rail map (or more accurately diagram) consistancy
beforehand.

You forgot to include the link, i think, so here it is:

http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~ursa/p...ains/inter.htm

Is that the one you were thinking of?

However I think it's OK that stations on the Tube are shown differently
to railway stations - it's an added visual clue (alongside the thinness
of the Tube lines) that they're part of the Underground.

That's one way of looking at it. My approach to a map like this would to
be try to erase superfluous distinctions; since i don't think the
difference between NR and LU lines is important per se (i think the
difference in service level is, but not the operator!), i wouldn't try to
display it. But then, i'm not the Association of Train Operating
Companies.

Ironically, it seems the ATOC symbol for NR stations is the one originally
used on tube maps:

http://www.ursasoft.com/maps/LURS/extra/london-1909.gif

Also, that the interchange symbol started life as a hollow coloured
circle, as i suggest:

http://www.ursasoft.com/maps/LURS/big/london-1921.gif

It wasn't until Hutchison, in 1960, that interchanges went black:

http://www.ursasoft.com/maps/LURS/big/london-1961a.gif

This is sensible, though, since it deals with the conundrum of which line
interchange stations should take their colour from. That said, i really
like Beck's pre-1960 maps, where interchanges consist of one circle on
each line (in the line's colour).

Mad props to this excellent website on the history of interchange
symbology:

http://www.ursasoft.com/maps/LURS/

tom

--
Programming is a skill best acquired by practice and example rather than from books -- Alan Turing