User talk:Andrei loas

Hi Andrei,

Nice to hear that you appreciate the effort :). I saw your maps and you really did a lot of work to make those maps! You don't have to look no further for the guy who made the 1903-1939 maps, it was me...

Honestly, I think you should not change the 1903 to 1939 maps. Even though they are more detailed than the current maps, the paper versions don't work that well on a computer screen... In an ideal world, we should use a combination of our maps! Unfortunately, I don't have the time for that much work. If you think those maps should be included, we should talk about it at the cycling project.

As a sort of welcome present, I added a map of all Tour de France routes on the right. It might interest you, even though all stages are just straight lines, it shows something about the route that the Tour de France uses; you can clearly see France's perimeter, although Belgium seems to be a part of France... I made this a while ago, but never found the right article to put it in. --EdgeNavidad (Talk · Contribs) 19:04, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your reply, Edge. You're right, I know hand-drawn maps don't show well, especially the name of towns and stage numbers (no matter how "nice" I tried to write them). I already have some ideas regarding the improvement of these maps... After scanning all of my maps, I will erase the town names and type them in with a graphic program (even Paint works for that). Then, I'm planning on making them transparent and over-imposing them on the golden-yellow France geographic map used as the template for the official maps. Every map will have to be adjusted to fit the template, so I know this will take a lot of time (well, maybe not that much once I get the hang of it...).

But, seeing as not many people have assumed this responsibility, there is no hurry as of the moment. I could do this as a past-time activity over the next months, but I'm sure the result will be well worth it. I will send you the first "hybrid" map (as an example) in a couple of days, so you can tell me your thoughts about it. I can update the maps as I create them, and in the meantime I will continue to clean-up and correct the stage result tables. Currently, I'm at the 2004 edition. All the best! --- Andrei I. Loas (Talk · Contribs) 21:26, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just do what you want to do! I think everybody agrees that your maps are (a lot) better than no map, so the Tour articles from 1947 on would really be improved. And your hybrid map will probably be even better. One thing that I learnt from making the 1903-1939 maps: use a vector-based program (inkscape for example), and save the file as svg, not as jpg or gif or bmp. That makes it easy to make small changes. --EdgeNavidad (Talk · Contribs) 21:49, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well. after 3 days of tampering with Inkscape (I took your advice in the end, thanks!) and setting up the map templates, my first digital map is done... 1993 Tour de France. I hope you like it, it took many hours to create and it's as close to the real route that I could get. More will follow in the next days, weeks, months... a long task ahead, but doable. Take care! ----- Andrei I. Loas (Talk · Contribs) 04:23, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Some remarks:

• The countries other than France look a little stretched. You could use for example File:France blank.svg to start with, it already has the country borders.
• You saved it as a "png"-file. It works, but if you save it as "svg", Wikipedia can also use it, and it is easier to change later on.--EdgeNavidad (Talk · Contribs) 19:21, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Job done, with another day of work! See it again on the 1993 Tour de France page. However, there seems to be a problem with posting my svg files, first of all they are huge (the template map I created takes around 14 MB) and the text seems to be all over the place after the upload to Wikimedia commons. You can see the original file at File:Route of the 1993 Tour de France.svg and use it if you want. I will post only .png versions for future maps on the Tour pages. I have a busy week coming up, so I'll take a break from the map making. I'll be back with more after my schedule clears up. ----- Andrei I. Loas (Talk · Contribs) 18:41, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It looks really amazing!--EdgeNavidad (Talk · Contribs) 08:39, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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I see that you have made the maps of the Tours back to 1989, excellent work. Out of interest: are you planning to do all the Tours? If you want to do them all, but can not find some information that you need, I'll help you the best I can. I imagine that finding the exact route of a stage in 2007 is easier than finding the exact route of a stage in 1907. --EdgeNavidad (Talk · Contribs) 11:44, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Edge, yes indeed I have in mind to do the maps of all Tours eventually, but it's gonna take a while - I'm pretty busy at the moment and the 1989 one was the last I could finish for some time to come. Fortunately, the Tours 1903-1939 will not pose any problems, as the route was pretty much identical (with certain differences between decades) and I have some reasonably accurate maps (scans of old images I found on the internet). The real problem is with the 1947-1987 Tours, I found some maps but they are mostly generic straight lines drawn across cities, taken from "Mirroir du cyclisme". First, the mountain and even some medium mountain stages are pretty simple: since the mountain passes travelled are usually known (from Memoire du Cyclisme or the Tour History guide), its a simple matter of plugging the route into Google maps and then drawing the shape into Inkscape. Google maps has a good data base, I found over 90% of the mountains I looked for, the location for the others I could find on specialised cycling websites. Now for the plain stages that I don't have any clue of the real route they took, what I usually do is I plug every start and finish town into Google maps and then try to adjust a route on secondary roads that fits the reported length of the stage; I avoid highways whenever possible, as it's a good guess they were using secondary roads back then as they do now. Of course, the result may not be 100% true (there could be alternate routes in many cases that give you about same length), but its the closest you could get without any other info. Knowing at least the itinerary (what towns they passed through on the day) will of course help the most, but for most of the years in the 1947-1987 period I couldnt even find that, so if you have any info on more precise itineraries for stages I would appreciate if you'd send me the links for those. Take care! --- Andrei I. Loas (Talk · Contribs) 17:49, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen your work on the Tour de France maps, and I think you're doing a great job. Keep it up! I'm trying to create a map for the 1988 Giro d'Italia. EdgeNavidad suggested that I use inkscape and find out the route, then use File:Map of Italy blank.svg as a base for the drawing. I found a rough course outline in an old Italian newspaper online that I was trying to mirror onto the other blank map. Edge suggested I plot the locations, but I don't know how to do that and then connect them on inkscape. I was wanting to make a great map, since I'm trying to get the 1988 Giro to a good article status. Do you think that you could help me out by telling me what you go through to make one of your Tour maps? I want to try and make this map nice, but the way I'm going about it, it won't resemble the course at all. ThurstAsh13 (talk) 23:20, 28 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, good to see a fellow cycling fan trying to do good work in here. The blank map of Italy seems ok to me to work on, but you might have problems when trying to add stages in the neigboring countries. I will try to summarize the way I build my maps in a few sentences below.

1) You should download and install Inkscape, then open the map template. 2) First important step of all is to pinpoint the stage towns on the map template. Now this can be a difficult job if you're starting from scratch. The way I do it, is I magnify the map to fit the screen, then I open Google map and search the name of each town and then zoom out the google map until you have the country map (Italy, in your case) on your screen relatively on a similar scale to the one open in Inkscape. Then I add a button/icon to that town in Inkscape, as good as I can approximate based on the location shown by GMaps. You can design your own start/finish town icons, the ones I created for use in my maps are in File:TourButtons.svg - feel free to copy/paste them into your file if you want, or change their color etc. 3) Now, once you have all the town buttons in place on the map, you have to start drawing the course of the stages. I try to be as accurate as possible, but sometimes, where a detailed map is unavailable, it's down to your best guess as to what route they took between the two start and finish towns. Now, if you're going to connect them by straight or slightly curves lines, that is not realistic at all - hardly ever a stage route resembles a straight line. The way I draw them, when the real route is unavailable, is by... !surprise! using Google maps again! I input the start and finish towns, and then I try to adjust the itinerary so that it fits the distance reported for the stage and using as few main roads as possible. Now, for plain stages, there might be many combinations available, choose any of them and then just draw a similar shape in Inkscape. It's better than doing a straight line, and it's a reasonable guess given that you started with no additional info. For the mountain stages, the job is easier since you should already know the mountain passes they travel, so just adjust the itinerary in Google maps to go through those places, while keeping the total distance close to the reported one for the stage (you can search the name of the pass in a separate window with GMaps, if it's not listed by default on the map). For drawing the route in Inkscape, I use the "Draw Bezier curve" feature on the left panel, then add points to form a shape that resembles the stage route you have on the official or google map, then I go to "Edit paths by node", select all nodes, then click "make selected nodes auto-smooth" and "Convert selected objects to path" in that order. Then, if you click inside the shape, you can adjust each point individually to more closely resemble your real route, and the adjacent points should auto-adjust smoothly. Don't use any fill for your line, only adjust the stroke settings (color, width, style) in the Object > Fill and stroke menu. 4) After you have drawn all stages as accurately as you can/wish, just add direction arrows on the shapes (or you can skip this if you want), stage numbers, town names and connect the various finish and start towns with simple curved lines. Use the text tool for any text additions. Then all should be done! Remember to SAVE your work frequently, as Inkscape does NOT have autosave feature (at least mine doesnt). Good luck and ask me if you have other specific questions. And by the way, you cand find one full example of one of my maps in here File:Route of the 1993 Tour de France.svg - you can check there all the objects in place, and look in Inkscape at the settings I used for each. Best, --- Andrei I. Loas (Talk · Contribs) 03:04, 29 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is the rough image of the route that I have, which was apparently sent out from La Gazzetta dello Sporta. [1]. My overall goal would be to get the map to resemble the one in the newspage well, but have your pizazz haha. I was originally going to try and draw the route in in paint for Windows, but this is much better, but more complex though.. Can you tell me which dots mean what by chance, I have my assumptions about them, but I'd rather have your thoughts on them first? Also how do I create multiple of the little buttons/use them individually (they are all apart of one block right now), I imported the file into the drawing if that means anything to you. I was originally having trouble with the first half of your instructions before I realized I had skipped a couple lines haha. Thanks for the help so far, I know this is probably a pain for you. I've sort of got the hang of the nodes and adjusting the route right now though. ThurstAsh13 (talk) 02:26, 30 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

After doing what you said for a while, this program is quite similar to the CAD program that I used in drafting, but different in purpose and with some of the functions. My only other problem I noticed is that the lines are just really small when I zoom to see the whole map. I'm zooming in quite far to make sure that I'm spot on with the route (the google maps tip helped a lot!). The line size and placing the buttons seem to be the only problems I'm facing as of now. I've done the first three stages and I'll probably do a couple each day, but once school ends I'll finish it quickly (should it not be done), then I'll show the complete first rough draft and take your criticisms (if you don't mind me doing that). Sorry to double post. ThurstAsh13 (talk) 03:03, 30 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, regarding your questions about the buttons: I used the blue one as the start towns in the stages, if they were different than the previous stages' finishing town; the red button is for the finish town of the stage and, where applicable, start of next stage (if it starts from same town); the blue/red button is for a start and finish town in the same stage, when it is different than the finish town from the previous stage. The green "play" button is the grand start of the tour, while the clockwise and counterclosckwise arros are used to indicate the general direction on the map that the tour is performed. You do NOT have to import all of these at once in your Inkscape working map, just open the TourButtons file separately in Inkscape, then just copy and paste whichever button you need on your map. You can then resize them by clicking on the object and dragging the edges to your desired size on the map. You will most probably have to place several buttons of the same type, do that by just copying and pasting them into your positions for the towns.

About the line size, you can change that from the Object > Fill and Stroke menu, with the shape selected; just change the thickness of the line to the value that suits you for an easy view of the line when zoomed out. I was using a thickness of 10 for a good size. Then, if you want to make it look nicer, like a road, you can duplicate the shape (Ctrl+D), then set the thickness of the duplicated line 1/2 of the initial one, and change its color from the bottom line bar; this way I was creating an initial 10 pts thick red line and a duplicated 5 pts black line on top of it. But you can leave a simple line if you want... in the end just add the direction arrow in the middle of it (also from the TourButtons file). Make sure the start and end nodes of your shape touch the borders of the start and finish town buttons for that stage, do that by dragging them while in the "Edit nodes" menu. I know all of this is tedious work at first, but the result, as you saw, can be quite satisfying. Good luck! (ah, and by the way, the map from the newspaper seemed decent with respect to the stage routes, so just follow those general shapes after you pinpoint the towns in your map, no need to reproduce an itinerary in GMaps for this one) --- Andrei I. Loas (Talk · Contribs) 00:04, 31 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Andrei, great maps! Would it be possible for me to get a copy of the SVG version of the 2012 TdF map? I'd like to rework it a bit to fit my smart phone screen and starting with the SVG copy would make that easier. Thank you! sn‾uǝɹɹɐʍɯ (talk) 23:42, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, you can find the svg version here File:Route of the 2012 Tour de France.svg But I must warn you, it is a huge size (14 MB) and for some reason wiki commons messes the text objects when uploading it, thats why I was using the png versions. Have fun! --- Andrei I. Loas (Talk · Contribs) 00:18, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! The SVG made editing much easier; I can upload the altered SVG if you're interested, however, the original SVG seems better for most purposes. sn‾uǝɹɹɐʍɯ (talk) 01:31, 4 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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Hi Andrei - I asked this on wikimedia commons, but duplicating my query here. Your Tour de France maps are great, and may I request that you do one for Tour de France Femmes when data is available? Thanks! Turini2 (talk) 11:19, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Another request for 2023! Turini2 (talk) 21:14, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]