OSGeo map symbol set

Motivation

The OSGeo Cartographic Library and all software projects obviously need a free map symbol set.

Mailing List

This topic along with the OSGeo icon set (Toolbar button icons) are discussed on the Graphics mailing list

Available Material

• Free map symbol sets from GFOSS.it: Simboli cartografici: trees, geology, meteorology and north arrows

• Cartography symbols from GRASS

• QGIS's symbols

• GpsDrive and OpenStreetMap maintain a repository of c. hundreds of Point Of Interest (POI) rasterized and SVG symbol icons under a permissive OSS license. Things like "banks" and "hospitals" are very well covered.

see http://www.gpsdrive.de/development/map-icons/overview.en.shtml

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Symbol_Rendering

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Tags_to_Symbols_Mapping

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Osmarender/Symbols

• US Government
  • National Park Service (public domain) http://www.nps.gov/hfc/carto/map-symbols.htm
  • Arc symbols for wildland fire (public domain?) http://gis.nwcg.gov/gstop_symbol.html
  • US Geologic Survey (public domain) Topo Symbols
  • BLM International Recreation Symbols
  • Emergency Management (Homeland Security Working Group of FGDC)
  • FGDC Digital Cartographic Standard for Geologic Map Symbolization http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/fgdc_gds/geolsymstd/download.php

• GeoServer default SLDs: http://svn.codehaus.org/geoserver/trunk/configuration/release/styles/ (useful?)

updated URL? http://svn.codehaus.org/geoserver/trunk/data/release/styles/

• AtlasStyler collection of SE symbols and SVGs: http://en.geopublishing.org/openmapsymbols/
• IAN Symbol Libraries SVG FREE http://ian.umces.edu/symbols/
• Open Icon Library - a free and open Icon collection, PNG: http://openiconlibrary.sourceforge.net/
• Map Icons Collection, (CC BY SA 3.0): http://mapicons.nicolasmollet.com/
• OpenCPN's collection of SVG sources + XPM, and PNG marker symbols (git repo; GPL >= v2)

• Add more here ...

Related Material

• See also OSGeo icon set - (Toolbar button icons)
• GRASS GUI icons: visual dictionary (Toolbar button icons)

Other Technology

(please keep focus on free as in freedom technologies which we can distribute and make use of without barriers)

Microsoft has a symbol server

Symbol Availability

see also the GpsDrive/OpenStreetMap matrix above

Symbol	GFOSS.it	GRASS	OSGEO	QGIS
Community
School			NA
Recreation Centre			NA
Emergency Services
Hospital			NA
Police station			NA
Fire station			NA
Ambulance			NA
Basic			NA
Arrow		yes	NA
Box		yes	NA
Circle		yes	NA
Extras			NA
Compass		Yes	NA
Airport		Yes	NA
Target		yes	NA
Dive Flag		yes	NA
Transportation
Information Centre			NA
Bus Stop			NA
Picnic Area			NA

Format

• The preferred interchange format is SVG.
• QGIS has a way of swapping fill color on SVG if you add some tags
• How to convert Fonts to SVG

Interested people

• Markus Neteler (proposer)
• Dave Sampson
• Martin Landa: GRASS developer
• Wolf Bergenheim
• Stefan A. Krüger: AtlasStyler developer
• Maksim Sestic
• Alex Mandel
• Hamish: GRASS, GpsDrive dev
• Brian Hamlin
• Milena Nowotarska
• Anders Söderman
• Michael Diener