Beta 7.14 Atlas comments

Mark Smith said:

I am disappointed that in this iteration of the atlas you have continued to leave out reference points on the maps. For example, I have open the map of Paul's journey from Troas to Philippi. The only cities on the map are Troas, Neaopolis, and Philippi. That's a strange map indeed. I am glad to see the route pointed out, but why cannot we have other cities on the map at the same time? Berea, Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, would certainly help us.

The Roman province of Macedonia is the only province that is labeled on the map. What province did Paul leave? What were the other provinces nearby? Doesn't this matter?

You've isolated the small story you are trying to tell me about from the whole rest of the world. That, in my mind, is not at all what an atlas is about. It is good to zoom in on a part of a story, but that shouldn't isolate me from the rest of the world.

Do you have plans to add a standard set of reference points? Will I ever be able to zoom out and see other reference points even those that are hundreds or even a thousand miles away? I want that.

I have not used Atlas for just this reason. I'll take a static map over this offering any day. 

As I said, I'm disappointed this latest version did not go further in rectifying a long-standing criticism of this tool. I appreciate what you've added - routes and so forth, but believe what you have taken away is a fatal flaw in making this tool useful for me.

Thanks for this helpful feedback, Mark. Our initial goal was to show the places that are part of the specific biblical story. But I agree that it would be more helpful to also provide other cities and regions for context (while not adding clutter or making it hard to find the story-specific places). It's on our list to address.

Mark Smith said:

Sean Boisen said:

It's on our list to address.

That's good to know. 

I wonder if the lines you are drawing might be just a bit wider, too? When the area being shown is fairly large, they are quite small and not easy to see, esp. when the color doesn't contrast too well with the surrounding area. For example, the map Paul's pre-conversion and early post-conversion travels has a line from Jerusalem to Caesarea which is almost invisible until one zooms in.

We've got some styling issues that we'll look into once we've completed shipping the Atlas volumes: we'll add this one to our list. I can see your point on https://app.logos.com/tools/atlas/PAULSPRECONVERSIONANDEARLYPOSTCONVERSION-EN: the green is hard to see on the terrain style, and should probably be swapped for a different color.