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2.0étoiles sur 5
This book is pricey and uneven., Mars 17 2000
This title is billed as the Sixth Edition, and reflects the coming and going of co-authors. It is too bad that the editor had so little influence.Sections of this book that stick to their cartographic knitting are excellent. Historical information is very intersting. Basic explanations, such as the evolution of ellipsoids is very well done. Some of the writing could have been extracted from a sophmore term paper, sprinkled with such inept phrases as "such as", "similarly", "however" and "in fact". Better editing could have reduced these distractions. The most glaring deficiency is in the area of computer technology. Either this material has not been updated since some earlier edition, or the author(s) are very uncomfortable with that subject matter. As examples: "Most common procedures used by cartographers have been translated into software programs written in special computer languages such as FORTRAN and C." "Today's well-rounded cartographer is routinely involved with these 'canned' (prewritten) mapping programs..." "The professional cartographer should, therefor, have a working knowledge of at least one computer language." We are regaled with three pages of detailed obselescent material on computer structure, but only 23 lines of overview on current instrument technology. There is a whole chapter on fonts and lettering, but no algorithm for conversion from Lat-Long to UTM. The central meridians for the UTM zones are not provided, nor is the DoD lettering scheme. One of the responsibilities of a text book is to arrange the subject matter in a structure where it flows logically and can be easily referenced. This book reads like a series of articles of varying quality published under one cover, with overlap resolution left as an exercise for the reader.
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