As a fan of historical atlases, I’m a huge fan of this idea. One of my wildest dream ideas is that every map in Shepherd’s Historical Atlas might be able to be remade using data in OHM.
One of the design strengths of many political maps is showing only a limited number of objects. When you try to build a map like these in OHM, the results highlight a current weakness with OHM’s “show everything” approach. The maps you shared only show a limited number of rivers, seas, and cities.
Any idea on how to approach the non-color-related issues with building maps like these from OHM?
I wonder if what we need isn’t a layer, but a lightweight editor of some sort. We could lock it down to a few key zoom levels, provide some options for projections, and a limited number of objects to include as a start. Ideally, we could create multiple maps, each with its own url. The could be used on their own, or embedded elsewhere.
Of course, there’d be issues with that, too… how do we ensure the underlying data doesn’t change underneath someone’s very pretty picture?
Or… maybe just a political map layer would be fine?