Howto Produce Map for MapMap: Process Overview

Preparing a map for MapMap consists of two stages:

1. Preparing map image
   The goal of this stage is to convert your map into image format MapMap understands, which is 4-bit uncompressed Windows BMP. If you already have map in raster image format, this can be as simple as performing required conversion in graphics editor, but to produce map which will look good on PDA (an even more - on all PDAs, both color and grayscale), a little more attention is required to this stage.
2. Preparing map coordinate database
   A coordinate database allows to lookup objects on a map by their names. Producing one requires more effort than preparing image, but it of course makes map much more usable. Anyway, coordinate database is optional and you may start using map without it, creating coordinate database later and elaborating it gradually.

Following topics discuss these stages in detail for different cases.

1. If you already have map in raster image format, you just need to convert it to 4-bit BMP format. Read more for techniques and tips how to get good-looking results.
2. What if you don't have image file? If you have paper source, you just scan it and refer to case 1 above. But if you have some map in non-raster (i.e. vector) format, or in propriatary format, or emebedded in application, or something else, which you can see on your screen and pan around, read generic image extraction howto. Check last topic below though, it may describe special conversion procedures for some common formats.
3. Now you should have the image of map ready. Read about preparing coordinate database for it.
4. There may be other ways to extract image and/or coordinate data from some formats:
   • PDF