Geocart: The Mac User’s Personal Cartographer

From Mercator to Van der Grinten to Pierce Quncunxial, this program will draw you a map in a flash

A heart-shaped map of the world drawn with Geocart

Amongst amateur and professional geographers, educators, and those who use maps on a regular basis, the availablility of maps drawn in specific projectons can be a touch and go proposition. Google images can frequeently be one’s very good friend (unless you’re a reader of Designorati:Cartography and you’ve heard of Paul Anderson’s fabulous Map Projections Gallery)

Even with the boon of said Gallery, if you’re serious about your mapping, there will come times when you have the need of having a custom view done, or format your own maps for print or online use. If you’re ready for a professional-grade tool–or if you just love a well-done map–Geocart is something you should look into.

What is Geocart?

Produced by Renton, WA’s Mapthematics and created by daan Strebe, Geocart is a program that runs on Macintosh only, on PowerPC Macs and older regular Macs with a 680×0 processor. It runs under system 7 and later (it will run on OS X but requires the “Classic Environment”; there is not as yet a PowerMac native version). It will draw maps of any area of the world, available in 150 projection styles. It is, in a very real sense, your own personal cartogapher. It will draw in the commonly known projections (Lambert, Mercator, Goode, Eckert) as well as projections you’ve never heard of (B.S.A.M., Quaric Authalic, Pierce Quincunxial, even a projection shaped like an apple logo).

Geocart’s rendering of the world in the Pierce Quncunxial projection

Geocart is customizable; it can create maps based on a variety of databases (available through Mapthematics) and can also save maps as databases. The maps can be saved, printed, or exported as EPS, Illustrator (compatible with 1.1 and up) and PICT graphics. This makes output usable in all current major layout and design applications–EPSs and Illustrator files can be used as is (dpi can be specified at export time). Exported graphics can also be explicitly specfied at bitmap or vector regardless of ultimate output format.

And, since the user is creating these graphics, they are usually free of copyright (though at least one database requires that the resulting map be used for noncommercial purposes only).

Some Minor Drawbacks

The observant reader will notice the use of some terms that seem obsolete: System 7, PICT; and the mention of the Classic environment. Geocart is a program that has been marketed since 1992 and was last updated to version 2.6.10 in about 1999. The application will run under OS X, but does require Classic to go, and according to some, the PICT format is pretty much extinct except as a legacy issue.

This, in our opinion, does not decrease the usefulness of GeoCART much, if at all. If anything, today’s number-crunching speeds cause the program to run so nimbly that the documentation warnings of “wait while the program draws the map” seem quaint. At current processor speeds, GeoCART draws a map in fractions of a second.

Great Documentation

Geocart comes in a large box that doesn’t merely have a CD-ROM rattling around in. This utility comes with some meaty and serious documentation:

• The Geocart manual, which comes in a three-ring binder;
• The text Introduction to Map Projections, Second Ed. by Porter W. McDonnell
• An Album of Map Projections, USGS Professional Paper 1453

The McDonnell book is a serious text in its own right, and between the two books one could teach a college-level course on map projections. At the very least, looking throught McDonnell’s book will impress the user as to the amout of work they won’t have to do in using the program. The Geocart users manual is like a breath of fresh air in this world of high-end applications that seem averse to including actual printed documentation.

The Bottom Line

Geocart is an amazingly useful program that can generate maps of every commonly used projection in a flash, giving the educator, professional cartographer, and map enthusiast what they need at thier fingertips. Though a Classic mode app, any usage issues that pertain are more than made up for by the power that the program provides and the usefulness of the output. With a $500 cost, prospective owners may be a little put off (ask about educational licensing), but we at D:Cartography encourage them to balance the woes of finding thier own graphics against the convenience and power it buys. Given the price of stock images, the program could pay for itself after just a few uses.

We unreservedly recommend Geocart to educational and professional Mac users and urge serious map enthusiasts who are also Mac addicts to look into this application.

By The Numbers:

• Application: GeoCART v 2.6.10
• By: Mapthematics, LTD, 2111 Olympia Ave NE, Renton Wa 98056; http://www.mapthematics.com, Phone 1.888.738.0041, Fax 1.888.738.0042.
• Cost: USD $500.00. Ask about educational licensing
• System Requirements: Macintosh PowerPC or 680×0-processor-based (with floating-point processor support), Mac System 7 through Mac OS X PowerPC (runs in the Classic environment)
• Positives: Maps available in most every imaginable projection, easily configurable (tutorial material is in the manual), lines such as great circles, loxodromes and such can be plotted, any map can be output as Illustrator 1.1 or EPS files for further editing in Photoshop or Illustrator (PICT is also available), output is copyright-free, runs quickly on modern hardware. You may never have to download another map graphic again.
• Negatives: Classic environment interface may require some reorientation for regular OS X users.