What Is It?Without meaning to step on any toes (if the "mapit" program follows any established release procedure), what you can get here is the "Manusized" version of the mapit program.This version has two improvements over the non-Manusized version:
How It Came To BeI originally created this version of mapit to assist in the display of the Payola variant games that I run, since it is more common in those games to have unusual ownership situations (stuff like Turkey owning Liverpool, Paris, Ankara, and nothing else, despite his three units being in Ukraine, North Africa, and Prussia).But of course, the colored supply center dot feature is very handy even in non-Payola games, and so I have often been urged to "release" my version to the public. I had not done so until now because the code was kind of jammed in there (if I remember right, it became incompatible with some of the existing mapit map files) and because I never got around to checking with mapit's maintainer (David Kovar, I believe) to see if what I had done should be made a "blessed" version of mapit. Enter Thomas Kuhlmann, who begged me for the code, and then helped me make it backward compatible to existing map files. The code now (thanks to him) detects when you are using a Manusized map file, and only attempts to color the supply centers if you are indeed using such a file (the backward compatibility problem was that my version would attempt to color supply centers no matter what, even if you were not using a Manusized map file). He also added a "-u" option, allowing you to force the centers not to be colorized even if it could do so (though why you'd ever use this option, I don't know). Much later, as part of the development of the DPjudge, I completely rewrote mapit in a mere 270 lines of Python as an integrated module for the dpjudge. This module, called dpmap, also serves as a standalone executable and is available for download here as well. The dpmap program assumes (requires) Manusized map input, and lacks all the parameter bells and whistles of the C language mapit. Even so, I like it much much better and you probably will too. Manusized MapsBy now you have gotten the idea that there is not only new code that makes up the mapit program, but that (to take advantage of the new features) you also need to feed the program a new version of the base color map file (that is, different from the version of the .ps file provided with the regular mapit distribution). So far, I have put together five Manusized color map files, and Juho Snellman has since contributed many more. For a couple of them, I just took the map file distributed with the standard mapit and went to town in the PostScript code. For some of the others, I used -- oh geez, what is it? mapper? mapmaker? one of those David Norman brand products -- to make a map, and then went to town on its PostScript output.What I'm saying is that if you want to create a Manusized version of a map not listed below, one way to do so is to take the existing mapit map and go to town with its PostScript contents. Going to town isn't all that hard anymore, but I won't go into how to do it here. Write me if you need to know (and if Thomas and I didn't document it in the C code -- I think we may have done so, and I hope we did). A better source of how-to knowledge than I would be, though, is Juho Snellman, who has created some very beautiful Manusized maps -- both from pre-existing mapit maps, and also from scratch. Thanks, Juho!! |
| Okay, with no further ado, here is what you need to make yourself a Manusized mapit. Hold down the Shift key while clicking to save each of these files to your disk. Then they're all yours. Enjoy! |
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mapit.c (C language version) dpmap.py (Python language version)
standard.ps / standard.info
[Lowe Judge: regular] (Manus Hand) |
Make me a new .ps file (or two, or three...) to add to the collection! |