On Thu, 15 Nov 2007, Dave A wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Sat, 10 Nov 2007, Ernst S Blofeld wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

That's like suggesting a pair of compasses when someone asks how to draw
a straight line. For drawing a Beckish diagram, geographical software is
the last thing you want.

And your suggestion is?

Inkscape, which someone had already suggested. Any other vector graphics
editor would be about as good.

I seem to remember asking someone at LU years ago what they used to draw and
redraw the Tube map - I think it was Adobe Illustrator.

I think this is true. If you open a copy of the tube map in Illustrator,
all the objects are quite well-behaved, which suggests to me that it was
drawn in Illy, and retains all the Illy-specific metadata which makes this
possible.

Okay, rooting around in the metadata of a copy of lon_con.pdf i have to
hand says, under 'Description':

Created: 26/10/06 16:28:35
Modified: 9/1/07 14:40:01
Application: Adobe Illustrator(R) 8.0

And in the PDF properties:

pdf:Producer: Acrobat Distiller 6.0 for Macintosh
pdf:Author: Transport for London
pdf:Creator: Adobe Illustrator(R) 8.0

So it looks like they draw it with Illustrator 8, and then make the PDF
with Distiller 6. I guess Illustrator 8 either couldn't save straight to
PDF (CS2, which i have, can), or they don't like the PDFs it makes.

The PDF uses the font 'NJFont', which i assume is New Johnston; it doesn't
embed it, so when i open the document, it gets substituted with what looks
to me like Lucida Grande, which gives the map a subtly weird look. Quite
nice, though.

Couldn't resist the urge to tinker:

http://flickr.com/photos/twic/2038325188/

Bonus nerd quiz: spot the three fantastic cities referenced.

tom

--
Come on thunder; come on thunder.