Using Maps

Introduction 

We have both static maps and Interactive maps. 

Static Maps were until recently the main option for inclusion and Genuki contains (and has always contained) a vast number of these maps.  They are just static images of maps. They are all stored in the Genuki media library. You can see examples of them:

• at the top of each county page
• on each of LAN place pages under the Maps topic
• at the top of all places pages under DEV and NBL

They are typically either diagrammatic maps - simple outlines of counties or parishes - or copies of historic maps of a local area.

A special sort of static map are those "clickable" maps at the top of each Genuki country page.  They have an image as above, but they also have a number of clickable areas, each area containing a hyperlink to another page.  This is achieved by having an image of the country map stored in the Genuki Media Library, together with some additional html stored in the relevant country node.  For html fanatics, this is achieved by using <map> and <area> tags.

These clickable maps on country and county pages are not editable generally by maintainers.

However other static maps can be added or amended in the same way as any other media items.

Interactive Maps

After the transfer to Drupal in 2015 ago, Genuki has been able to exploit modern mapping technology.  Typically we are able to combine:

• one or more base layers of map (eg. OpenStreetMap, GoogleMaps, Ordnance Survey, etc) - these are automatically rendered as a map but are provided as map tiles from an external service provider or from the Genuki server (in the case of Genuki)
• place/church markers and parish boundaries as geometrical shapes in Drupal "geofields" on the relevant nodes  (these can be both viewed and edited)
• presenting the maps on a page by mapping software (Leaflet), which displays all the base layers and the geometrical shapes (stored as a "vector" layer).

Examples of interactive maps in Genuki:

• the map at the top of each place page
• the "nearby churches" and "nearby places" analyses
• the "county map" tab on place nodes
• the maps obtained during the main Gazetteer search
• the maps obtained during the main Churches search

Common to all the presentations are:

• two buttons in the top left to enable zooming in and out of the map and to display the map full screen
• A button in the top right hand corner that pops up a menu of all the maps available at that location
• One or more tear drop markers showing the location of the place and other related places resulting from any search.

Zooming in and out on several ot the map types will change the underlying scale and presentation of the map (eg the Ordnance survey map changes scale)

Parish Boundaries (Kain and Oliver)

There is now a complete set of  K&O map tiles for the whole of England and Wales.  They show on Zoom Levels 11-14, which are the most relevant for viewing and editing parish maps. You can therefore toggle between these and other maps to understand the parish boundaries.

These maps have now been used (thanks to Ken G and others) to include the parish boundary within the Gazetteer. This means that in most cases when viewing an interactive map as part of a place page you will find the parish (and often the county) boundary visible directly