User guide

Page 28

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g the InstantAtlas Area Profile Template User Guide

You can find a guide to creating images or index files for background

mapping in the InstantAtlas online support resources under ‘Tips and

Tricks’: http://www.instantatlas.com/supportdownloads.xhtml

Click the “Add” button to upload an index file and click the ‘Background

Image Collection’ option. You can type the pathname to the index file into

the ‘Index file’ box (e.g. ‘C:\images\250k.xml). You can also access a drop

down list of the most recently used index files by clicking the arrow to the

right of the ‘Index file’ box. Alternatively, click the ‘Browse’ button to search

for an index file located elsewhere on your computer or network

(Figure 39).

Figure 39

The publisher needs to know the file extension of any images that are

used. We currently support JPEG and PNG image formats for use as

background mapping, so please specify your image format here. If your

images are not in either of these formats you will have to convert them.

The ‘Min extent’ and ‘Max extent’ boxes define the range of map widths at

which this background mapping layer will display in your report. The units

are map units and therefore depend on the geographic coordinate system

of your map files. For example, if the coordinate system is British National

Grid the units will be metres. The smaller the ‘Min extent’ value, the further

you have to zoom into the map before this background mapping layer

disappears. The greater the ‘Max extent’ value, the further you have to

zoom out of the map before this background mapping layer disappears.

The layer shown in Figure 39 will never switch on if the map is displaying

an area that is more than 100,000,000 map units wide. If the area shown

in the map is less than 100,000,000 map units wide, this background

mapping layer will display, no matter how far you zoom into the map.

You might decide to add a second background mapping layer by clicking

the “Add” button and browsing for a new index file called ‘detailed.xml’

(Figure 40). Imagine that the images referenced by ‘detailed.xml’ are more

detailed than those referenced by ‘coarse.xml’.