repositories of community-supplied icons and custom map layers for public use
I can't believe nothing like this is available already, but I googled my heart out and couldn't find anything. So I'm going to propose something myself. Tell me if there is something like this out there already, I would like to know and not waste more time :)
First, some background. CalTopo is unlike many mapping apps out there in that it is very extensible - you can import your own map base layers, overlays, and even icons. That's one reason why CalTopo is awesome.
But! Today, the current set of maps and icons in CalTopo is limited in what is available out-of-box and what is easily accessible through third-party means (just look at the requests in these forums for a "restroom" icon. :-)) More than the icons, though, the out-of-box CalTopo maps are missing a lot of public land information. The "Public Lands" overlay is just data from BLM - which is federal lands, which is mostly out west. In my state of New Jersey, we have a lot of wildlife management areas and state parks and forests that are publicly accessible, but do not show up in the "Public Lands" overlay because they are state lands which are not included in the BLM data (which is what the "Public Lands" overlay relies upon).
What I propose are repositories of maps and icons that are publicly available for anyone to use, and that can be contributed to by anyone in the CalTopo community.
I have put together such a thing on GitHub.com. For those unfamiliar with GitHub.com, it is an online platform for collaborating on projects using Git, a version control system. While it’s most famous for software development, it can also be used for non-code projects like documentation, design assets or anything that benefits from version tracking and collaborative workflows among people within a community. In other words, it can easily provide repositories where the CalTopo community can share with each other maps and icons.
I seeded the icons repository with some basic icons for the hunting community. Hopefully, a lot more can be contributed by others. If this idea takes off, there is no reason why there can't be icons for other use-cases such as hiking, biking, birding, skiing, etc. The goal is to have many icons of many different types that can be imported into CalTopo based on your use-cases. Note - I am not an artist; I cannot design icons properly. But there has to be CalTopo users out there who are also graphic designers and artists who can contribute nice icons for this effort! :-)
I also seeded the map repository with NJ maps, again mostly of interest to the hunting and fishing communities within the state of New Jersey. These maps fill the gap that the out-of-box CalTopo has - but more than that. The number of custom maps that this provides for those in New Jersey provide more data than even most (if not all) of the current apps that are out on the market, even those that are specifically geared to the hunting community (e.g. find me a hunting app that provides me, out of box, the location of public land access points, saltwater fishing access sites, shellfish lease areas, pheasant stocked areas, and trout stocked streams - hint: you won't find one :-)
- CalTopo community icons repository: https://github.com/caltopo/icons
- CalTopo community maps repository (New Jersey): https://github.com/caltopo/maps/tree/main/New%20Jersey
To submit your own maps and icons, you need to sign up for a GitHub.com account (it's free) and understand how to use the pull-request workflow. It isn't hard, but if you've never done it before, it takes a little bit of learning. Here are some GitHub docs that explain the workflow. But it is well worth it if you want to upload and share information with others.
Again, I have no idea if something is already out there that already provides this kind of stuff to the CalTopo community - if so, please let me know and I'll go participate in that effort. I need more icons!! :-D
Comments
3 comments
I think this is an awesome idea!
Filling these out with some free icons... you can now see the gallery of icons here - click one to get to the location of the icon in github:
https://caltopo.github.io/icons/
Great idea. This is a big thing CalTopo is missing...getting started with my own custom sources/icons was a pain. And there is a lot of very useful data out there which is not part of the default layers. I'm very busy right now but at some point I will see about adding custom sources for New Mexico into the github. There are also plenty of country-wide layers people would be interested in, eg: NOAA snow depth, ESRI Worldview, updated NAIP imagery, USGS Hydrography layers.
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